South Sudanese who had fled due to fighting are now returning home

By Godfrey Olukya   22-1-2015

Thousands of South Sudanese who had fled their homes to neighboring safer areas have now started returning home.

They fled because of the fighting between government troops and rebels led by former vice president Riek Macher. The fighting started on December 15th 2013 in the country’s capital Juba but later spread to other parts of the country displacing over 1 million people and leading to over 10,000 deaths.

South Sudan’s news agency,’ Gur-Tong’ has said that since  the outbreak of violence in December 2013, an estimated 1.5 million people have been displaced from their homes and communities, and an estimated 450,000 people have crossed into neighboring Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda in search of food and to escape violence according to the UN.

”Upper Nile was among the states that was worst hit during the crisis. The crisis had widespread negative consequences for the human rights situation in many parts of the country, especially in areas of greatest military confrontation as was the case in Upper Nile.”’ it said.

The Mayor of Malakal City Council, Ustaz Abdallah Jago said the recent statistics that was conducted by the municipality has revealed that majority of the civilians are now slowly returning to their homes.

“I want to assure you that there is total security in Malakal nowadays; and for that reason our citizens have responded to come to their residence to resume their normal life. We are living peacefully and we hope this peace continues so that we rebuild our destroyed
infrastructures,” Jago stated.

“Over 30 thousand people have come back and are not living in the UNMISS camps but in their houses. They have returned all along from DeTang, Wau-Shilluk, Lelo and Kodok; where they have been hiding due to the crisis. Some people now are reconstructing their houses. The biggest issue however are people do not have sources of income because everything has been destroyed and some people have lost their jobs.”

Jago says people should desist from spreading rumors that the town is still not safe.

“These are people working for rebels’ agenda. Some people are in Juba and others live in Khartoum and they continue to scare our citizens to discourage their plans to return to their homes in town.”

He said that most roads have been leveled to allow for easy movement of security personnel in the State and that effort are being made to make sure all internal roads are leveled.

The SPLA recaptured Malakal town at least six times from the SPLM in opposition as it was considered their strong hold.
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