The Anyuak are not accountable for insecurity in the Nuer Villages

This article is written in response to Mr. Chuol Chigach’s article “http://www.southsudan.net/SSNET1/ethnic.html“ in which he cunningly informed the international communities about the legal removal of the Nuer tribe from the Anyuak land. The phrase ethnic cleansing that “Mr. Chigach” refers to in his article, in the first place, does not apply to the removal of the people who have occupied someone’s land at gunpoint. Instead, the phrase ethnic cleansing implies to the Nuer occupation of the Anyuak land, which started centuries ago. The Nuer has been ethnically cleansing the Anyuak from Nyium Omiel, currently called Nassir, Southern Sudan, all the way to Gambella. As a matter of fact, Mr. Chuol who seemed to be well informed about the event in Gambella could not swallow the truth. One could tell from the context of his article. At one point, he calls it coercive repatriation; at another, he calls it voluntary repatriation. These kinds of assertions by the Nuer elites, of course, are not new to the Anyuak. It has been always a tendency of the Nuer elites both in Sudan and Ethiopia to foster their lust for the Anyuak land not even to utilize whatever resource there is but to destroy it. The author of the article mentioned above, for instance, is one of the Nuer elites who are advocating settlements of the Nuer in Anyuak land by hooks and crooks. 

Literally, Encyclopedia Britannica defines ethnic cleansing as an attempt to create ethnically homogeneous geographic areas through the deportation or forcefully displacement of persons belonging to particular ethnic groups from original homelands. Ethnic cleansing sometimes involves the removal of all physical vestiges of the targeted group through the destruction of monuments, cemeteries, and houses of worship. So, the definition, here, is not relevant to the removal of the Nuer around Gambella town and its neighborhoods. The Nuer were removed from places that did not belong to them. Instead, the phrase ethnic cleansing definition is relevant to what the Nuer have been doing to the Anyuak displacing them from their homelands. The Nuer has been forcefully displacing the Anyuak from their land. The Anyuak in Ochom, Pinykew, Abol, Akado, Itang in Ethiopia, and Akobo and Nyium (currently called Nassir in Sudan) have been aggressively forced out of their land by the same Nuer tribe. In the course of the Nuer occupation or forced entry into the Anyuak land, they had removed all physical vestiges of the Anyuak culture through destruction. It is, therefore, the Anyuak who should accuse the Nuer tribe of destroying their cultural heritage and not the Nuer to talk of ethnic cleansing. 

The roamers are now heard to be collecting false “facts” for a possible law suit. The question is who are they going to sue? What kind of “facts” will they have to present to help their case in the court of law? What fallacy do they have in mind?  In his article, “Mr. Chigach,” fake name perhaps, has accused both Federal and Local governments of failing to keep the Nuer villages in order; accused the Anyuak leaders of forcefully repatriating the Nuer. The Anyuak did not cause the insecurity in the Nuer “land.”  The people who run away from insecurity do not carry guns and create insecurity to the place they sought sanctuary at. If anything it is the Lou Nuer and/or Murle are factors that would have caused the insecurity. At this time it is not so. These same people who claim insecurity have fought the Anuak several times. The fact of the matter is, these people are not internally displaced persons (IDPs) as Mr. Chuol alleged in his article. They are occupiers and raiders who went there with the intention to settle forever. They were well oriented by their leaders to carry out a trend of occupation like their ancestors did in the past: intimidation and war.
 
The evidence of the Nuer colony of the Anyuak land is very striking when the Nuer leaders like Mr. Chuol start naming places as “new land” in Gambella town and other places down the river from Gambella. Some have written their names on people’s mangoes at Pinykew and Ichwai. This is exactly what the Nuer has been intentionally doing in the rest of the Anuak lands.

A person looking for sanctuary in someone’s land with no intention to take possession cannot rename places and cannot carry a gun or kill those giving the refuge or safe place. The portion of the land the Nuer call “new land” has its official name, Changkwar. So, the notion that the Nuer presence in Gambella has something to do with insecurity in their “villages” is simply inaccurate and phony in all accounts. The author of the article is well aware that his tribe presence in the Anyuak land around Gambella is illegitimate because he said in his article that the “deportation” as he put it, was an attempt by the Federal government to clear the Nuer from the Anyuak areas. He knows that the Nuer were in Anyuak areas illegally.

Well, the Federal government’s action is justifiable because the Nuer exodus into the region has been problematic all along, not for the Anyuak state of security only but also it has been problematic to the security of the whole country and law abiding citizens in the region. Which country in the world keeps people whose national identities are not known? Which country in the world hospitalizing people who do not know law and order and bearing illegal guns? Which country in the world keeps someone who harbors rebels? It is the government duty to keep the region safe from the trouble makers, and one way of doing that is to clean up the region by sorting out who are really the peace loving citizens and who are destabilizing peace and stability in the area.

The Nuer has taken so much land already including places to which they are being returned. Yet, they are not satisfied with what they have already taken from the Anyuak. Whatever the author stated in the article is fabricated and intended to twist the truth of the removal exercise. The Anyuak have been always kind to the Nuer. Neighboring with the hostile human beings like the Nuer happen to be a curse. They do not have vocabulary of peaceful coexistence. When they are told to go to the place where they can farm, raise their children, and develop their villages in peaceful manner, they call it “ethnic cleansing” because these are the kind of hostile phrases they have been socialized in. The federal and local government want Gambella region to develop, as other parts of the country, but the Nuer whose culture is encompassed in violence do not give development a chance. They roam and kill. That is why the Nuer leaders like Mr. Choul keep beating the drum of hostility because it is part of the Nuer life.

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Listen to the interview with Dr. Mamo on Anyuak land issues