IMAGE: CNS photo/Paul Jeffrey
By Paul Jeffrey
WAU,
South Sudan (CNS) — Rita Williams slept under a tree beside St. Mary Catholic
Cathedral, her three hungry children beside her. Around them, as many as 16,000
other displaced people filled the cathedral compound, hoping the church would
keep them safe as their country spirals into greater violence.
“I’ve
been here two weeks, since the soldiers chased us out of our house and burned
it,” she said April 26. “We have nothing, not even salt. Our clothes
are dirty, and some days all we have to eat or drink is water. We’re waiting. I
don’t know for what, but we’re afraid to go back home.”
When
civil war ripped apart South Sudan’s fragile democracy in 2013, residents of
this city in the country’s northwest watched the violence from afar, seemingly
unconcerned that the politically manipulated ethnic violence would spread here.
And then it did, and the victims ran for the city’s churches.
“It
wasn’t safe anywhere, but people said that if they were going to be killed,
they preferred to be killed in the church because this is the place that Jesus
is present. They wanted to die in the church rather than die in their homes,”
said Father Germano Bernardo, a priest in Wau.
Although
tensions had been building for months, last June intense fighting broke out between soldiers of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, who are
mostly members of the dominant Dinka tribe, and a mixture of local opposition
groups and members of other ethnic communities. On June 23, the violence spread
into the center of Wau, where two members of the cathedral choir were killed.
“They
were walking home in the evening after choir practice and were attacked by six
soldiers, who shot them dead,” said Father Bernardo, who at the time
served as vicar general of the diocese.
The next
day, government soldiers started looting and burning houses belonging to the
Fertit and other ethnic groups, and people rushed to the city’s churches and a
nearby U.N. base, Father Bernardo told Catholic News Service.
By June
25, he said, soldiers were driving around the city, “shooting people as
they ran from their houses.”
One
small child, age 1, was killed as he ran for the church, said Father
Bernardo.
“There
was no way to get to the cemetery, so we buried 14 people within the cathedral
grounds,” he said. “From then until now, insecurity has reigned. So
people stay in the churches. Many of their homes have been looted, and if they
leave the town they’ll be killed.”
More
than 400 people were killed and more than 120,000 displaced in the initial
phase, leaving churches, aid groups and United Nations agencies scrambling to
respond. The churches got help from Catholic Relief Services and other groups
that provided shelter materials, hygiene kits, cooking pots and food. The
church drilled two new wells to supplement two existing wells on the cathedral
grounds, but that’s still not enough for the displaced who make the cathedral
grounds their home, so Oxfam trucks water into the site every day.
Sporadic
fighting around the city has continued since, with occasional incidents that
push a new group of civilians out of their homes.
In
January, for example, a group of government-affiliated cattle keepers attacked
local farmers they believe are aligned with anti-government rebels, and
thousands fled neighboring villages for the safety of Wau’s churches, including
more than 5,000 who filled the grounds of an Anglican church.
In
April, after two high-ranking army officers were killed in an ambush nearby,
SPLA soldiers and Dinka militia members rampaged through Wau, murdering and
robbing non-Dinkas. The United Nations said at least 16 people were killed;
other local sources reported double that number. Some 8,000 more people were
displaced, including Williams and 3,800 others who came to the already crowded
Catholic cathedral grounds.
Facing
widespread criticism for its actions in and around Wau, the government announced in April that it would pull back the SPLA from Wau and deploy national security agents, a force generally considered less repressive than the army. But many here
remain skeptical.
“At
this point, nobody can believe what the government says, because they say one
thing and another thing happens. So people don’t want to go home. SPLA soldiers
are still moving around in their uniforms and with their guns. The people are
afraid,” Father Bernardo said.
Wau has
long been a center of tension between pastoralists and crop farmers. Violence
between the two groups led to the displacement of thousands in 1996, but most
returned home within a few days. Yet the current crisis, like many local
conflicts in the world’s newest nation, has been exacerbated by the broader
political crisis centered in Juba, the national capital, where struggles for
power in December 2013 launched the country into a bitter civil war.
Catholic
leaders, led by Bishop Rudolf
Deng Majak, played a key role in mediating the 1996 crisis. Yet Bishop Deng, who died in Germany in March, had been sick for
some time and living outside the country. The bishop kept in touch by phone with
Father Bernardo throughout the crisis, yet Anne Masterson, the country
representative of Norwegian Church Aid, said things might have been different
had he been present.
“He
had been the priest of some of these military commanders and knew everyone. So
perhaps people felt a bit lost without him. His absence may have allowed some
of the clan divisions to be manipulated for political purposes, something the
bishop had worked all his life to prevent,” she said.
In
Bishop Deng’s absence, the South Sudan Council of Churches, which includes the
Catholic Church, mounted a local peace initiative. It pushed for face-to-face
meetings among all parties, finally pulling together a three-day workshop of
civil society leaders with government and military officials in December. Those
in power made promises, which church leaders say they either did not keep, or
local officials were replaced by people who had no interest in honoring the
commitments of their predecessors.
“The
army admitted that its soldiers had done some things wrong, and they said that
from then on they wanted to be friends with the civilians. And the civilians
said they were ready for a new phase,” Father Bernardo said. “The
soldiers said that in order to build trust they would go out and clean up the
town, and they would come talk with the civilians in the different displacement
camps. But once the workshop was over, nothing happened. The government then
said it would move all the soldiers seven kilometers away and only have police
in the town. But again, nothing happened, up to now. If the government says
something, the civilians won’t believe it.”
The Rev.
Bang Akuei Nyuol, an Anglican who serves as regional director for the South Sudan Council of Churches, said
government officials did try to mitigate the violence by mounting a campaign
for civilians to turn in weapons. Yet the same day it convinced a group of
cattle keepers to hand over their assault rifles, a large number of cattle were
stolen from them. In the wake of the cattle raid, few listened to the
government’s appeal to disarm.
And so
the displaced wait.
“I’m
a university graduate, but I’ve been sitting in this camp for almost a year,”
said William George, a resident of the cathedral camp. “This morning I
didn’t eat anything. Nor did my children. If I had $100, I’d leave for Egypt or
somewhere else, anywhere other than here. My house was burned and all my things
taken. There’s no future here because there’s no accountability. They can kill
someone and there’s no response, no judgment.”
Father
Moses Peter, the diocesan emergency coordinator, said the victims of the
violence trust the clergy to protect them.
“Most
felt when they came to the church that God was immediately going to look after
them and keep them safe. And many felt that if people came to do violence, that
we priests would challenge them,” he said.
“It’s
true that sometimes we priests challenge people who are not acting correctly,
but then people complain that we are attacking them in our homilies, or that we
are against the government or siding with the rebels. There are a lot of
dangerous accusations. When you tell the truth it’s made to seem like you are
doing something wrong. When people feel that the word of God that you preach is
touching them and they don’t want to change, then they accuse us of all sorts
of things, and say we should be arrested.”
Father
Peter said he has no time to worry about such threats, as he’s too busy
managing the daily crises of the displaced. In late April he was waiting for
food that had been promised by the U.N. World Food Program. He worried that the
little bit of food that was available would produce more anger than
satisfaction among the cathedral’s guests.
More
than 30 million people need food assistance in Yemen, South Sudan, Nigeria and
Somalia due to conflict and drought, but on April 28, the head of the World Food
Program, David Beasley, said the U.N. only has enough money to help 8.4 million
of them.
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