# Nuer Massacre

The Nuer Massacre, which occurred from December 15 to December 18, 2013, was a well-organized, intentional mass killing perpetrated against thousands of Nuer civilians by Dinka SPLA soldiers, Presidential Guard - Tiger Division, and Mathiang Anyoor, orchestrated by the President of the Republic of South Sudan Salva Kiir Mayardit, Jieng Council of Elders (JCE), and Dinka high-ranking military generals within the SPLA army in Juba. More than 47,000 Nuer civilians were massacred in four days between December 15 and December 18, 2013. A couple of years later, the death toll was projected to be over 50,000 Nuer civilians as fighting rapidly engulfed the entire region of Upper Nile.
The Nuer Massacre happened as the result of the emergence of a predator state and extreme ethnic group entitlement. It sparked a wave of widespread anger among the Nuer people and the rise of recurrent revenge attacks against Dinka by the Nuer White Army and the defected Nuer SPLA soldiers marked the beginning of the South Sudanese civil war. This led to the expansion of UNMISS Protection of Civilians (PoC) sites across South Sudan which were originally established on 8 July 2011 with the intent of the Security Council renewing the UN resolution 1996 (2011) for an extended period, Since then the Security Council has been renewing the resolution consistently to remain in South Sudan.
The Nuer Massacre was termed as ethnic cleansing, except the UK Government which has branded this kind of targeted mass killings based on ethnic line as genocide.

## Background

In 2012, President Salva Kiir Mayardit dismissed and appointed a new government cabinet including dismissing mostly Nuer generals and vice-president Riek Machar, who announced on July 2, 2013 that he would contest South Sudan’s presidency in 2015. According to Clemence Pinaud, an Associate Professor at the Indiana University Bloomington, the move was ethnically motivated and highly influenced by the Jieng Council of Elders to oppose the democratic transition of power by many people. The Jieng Council of Elders, which is a political council made of Dinka elders and tribal leaders, intervened within the politics of the country shape the government into a "Dinka ethnocracy-led government".
After Riek Machar announced that he would run for the presidency in 2015, Gen. Pagan Amum Okiech, former Secretary General of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), the ruling party, and Brig Gen. Madam Rebecca Nyandeng Garang, the wife of the late John Garang De Mabior also declared their candidacy to challenge Kiir for the presidency afterward. This posed tension within the country and early attempts were made to engage mostly Kiir and Machar to avoid a potential civil war, which did not succeed. In early 2013, a committee was formed and a series of meetings were held to resolve the political tension within the SPLM party but this also came to a dead end. Thereafter, Kiir and the Jieng Council of Elders began to secretly mobilize the Dinka militia and the presence of Dinka security forces deployed in and around Juba was seen as an early sign of war. Kiir secretly recruited a private tribal army, dubbed the Mathiang Anyoor, outside of the normal SPLA structure and placed them under Gen. Paul Malong Awan, Governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal state.
At the beginning of December 2013, there were spinning stories about the arrest and the disarmament of SPLA Nuer soldiers guarding Nuer politicians and generals before the SPLM National Liberation Council meeting according to multiple reports.

## The massacre

On the morning of December 15, 2013, President Salva Kiir's speech at the National Liberation Council meeting triggered the beginning of the killing, the deadliest, and most notable tragedy ever inflicted on the Nuer People. A faction of SPLM including Machar who were excluded from the new cabinet was angered by the president's speech and boycotted the meeting. Knowing that President Kiir would send soldiers after him to arrest him, Machar fled Juba. In the evening of that same day, the massive killing and massacre of the Nuer on ethnic grounds engulfed Juba. The Dinka SPLA generals upon President Salva Kiir and Jieng Council of Elders' order, conducted a military operation systematically killing along the ethnic line in Juba.
Prior to the speech, the Mathiang Anyoor was secretly mobilized and relocated to Juba, the Capital City of South Sudan, and was let loose on the Nuer People on December 15, 2013. Generals Paul Malong Awan, Bol Akot, Garang Mabil, Salva Mathok, Marial Chanoung, and Akol Koor, a cabal of hard and ruthless men, were to coordinate and liaise between the Dut Ku Beny and the respective forces under their command in Juba. Trusted elements from the President's Warrap State in the Presidential Guard -Tiger Division and Akol Koor's Internal Security Bureau of the National Security Services were drafted in to work with and guide this private militia in the execution of their wet works-slaughter mission in Juba. The Chief of General Staff, Gen. James Hoth Mai, and the SPLA leadership in Juba were not to know or even be remotely involved, instead, he was expressly granted leave of absence to visit family in Australia by the president and Commander-in-Chief, Gen. Salva Kiir, because he was a Nuer.
President Kiir addressed the nation on national television where he announced a simulated military insurrection by Riek Machar which he baptized as a coup and which Machar strongly refuted.
The Nuer Massacre was carried out on a massive scale of door-to-door operation. Hundreds of thousands of Nuer were massacred in their own homes, thousands were killed on their way to the UN sites in hope of seeking shelter under UN protection. On the morning of December 16, 2013, both UN bases around Juba opened their gates to 14,000 Nuer Civilians. During the first days, hundreds of thousands of Nuer civilians sought shelter at the UN Base. As the fighting continued, the number of people seeking shelter reached 200,000 as foreigners and other non-Dinka people joined afterward.
In the span of 4 days starting from the evening of December 15 to December 18, though the mass killing didn't slow down until the end of December 19, the number of Nuer people killed was between 20,000 and 47,000 civilians mostly women and children. The Nuer Massacre was conducted through mass killing, Nuer women and girls were gun rapped and burned alive in their dwellings, mass slaughter of children and elderly people and fire squadding of Nuer young men and boys.
The news of the killing of the Nuer in Juba by Dinka quickly spread throughout Nuerland. The Nuer White Army joined forces with the defected Nuer SPLA soldiers (who are now known as SPLA-IO) for retaliation and the conflict intensified throughout South Sudan. Eastern Jikany Nuer mostly Gaajiok (GaatJiok/GaatMajiok) of Nasir led by General Gathoth Gatkuoth HothNyang carried out an offensive attack to capture Malakal and rescue the Nuer who were stuck in the Malakal UN site and to bring them back home. Cdr General Koang Chuol Ranley rebelled in Bentiu and defeated the government troops. General Simon Gatwech Dual led the Lou Nuer and captured Bor town. General Peter Gatdet Yak became the first Nuer SPLA general to rebel against Kiir's government. He fought his battles around Juba and along the Juba-Bor road on December 18 before retreating to the Greater Upper Nile. Peter Gatdet fulfilled the promise he made way before the massacre happened - "Anyone who wants to kill the Nuer has to go through me first". Peter Gatdet yet again promised his Nuer People after the massacre that he was coming to rescue them "My Nuer people, the world is against us, Kiir is against us, but God is on our side. I am coming".

### Gudele Massacre

On the night of December 16, 2013, Dinka soldiers and police patrolling the Gudele police station and the Gudele neighborhood rounded up more than 400 Nuer men, women, and children and forced them into a small overcrowded room inside Gudele police station. During that night, the soldiers killed them by opening fire indiscriminately on 400 people through the two windows of the suffocating overcrowded room.
According to multiple survivors interviewed by the UNMISS, many of these people were arrested during the Gudele neighborhood house-to-house search and some of them were collected at checkpoint at the Gudele crossroad, based solely on their ethnicity according to Human Rights Watch agent who interviewed seven survivors of Gudele massacre.
Ivan Simonovic, Human Right Watch official in the United Nation and a former Justice Minister of Croatia condemned the Gudele massacre and called it "horrible crimes". Simonovic in his remark to the BBC said, "President Kiir is downplaying the massacre which is being commited by his own SPLA soldiers".

### Perpetrators

The leading architects behind the Nuer Massacre according to several reports are as follows, President Salva Kiir Mayardit, Gen. Paul Malong Awan the then Governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal State, Gen. Bol Akot, Justice Chan Reec the Chief Justice of South Sudan, Gen. Akol Koor Kuc the Director General of Internal Security, Gen. Garang Mabil, Justice Ambrose Riny ThiiK the former Chief Justice and mobilizer-in-chief of the tribal army and chairman of the Jieng Council of Elders, Presidential Legal Advisor Telar Riing Deng, Salva Mathok the President's brother-in-law, Gen. Bona Bhang Dhol and the members of Jieng Council of Elders (JCE) among others. Gen. Marial Noor, the infamous former head of the disbanded Public Security, was drafted in towards the end because of his reputation for savagery and history of elimination of undesirables during the liberation struggle days.

## The Massacre

On the night of December 15, 2013, with the coup successfully simulated at the Giada Military Barracks, at a pre-arranged signal, Dinka civilian youth in Juba from the President's Warrap Home State and Northern Bahr el Ghazal was summoned and armed, according to AU Commission of inquiry on South Sudan. Weapons, ammunition, and uniforms were distributed in the dead of the night as the Dut Ku Beny the president's private army were simultaneously deployed. President Kiir now has his private military in the form of the Dut ku Beny, SPLA, and elements of the Presidential Guard - Tiger division and National Security; Money appropriated from the national coffers and state-owned Media to announce the failed coup bid.
On the morning of the 16th December 2013, after a whole night of shooting indiscriminately and mass killing of Nuer people both civilian and those in military uniform, the people of Juba city woke up to a camouflage-clad President Salva Kiir with groups of politician and SPLA military generals announcing on national television that there had been a coup attempt by Riek Machar that had been foiled and contained. President Kiir also announced a curfew in Juba between 6 A.M and 6 P.M.
That morning and for the next few days, Nuer soldiers under Dinka commands, civilians, youth, women, and children were slaughtered arbitrarily. The Dinka military generals involved in the pogrom against the Nuer, led by President General Salva Kiir and Gen. Paul Malong as the lead coordinator of the military operation, divided Juba City into four sectors and placed each general under a specific section.
Gen. Marial Chanoung, the head of the Presidential Guard, was assigned to command the Southern Sector and take charge of securing the Giada Military Barracks which housed the Presidential Guard (Tiger) and was the venue where the coup was simulated. His role, with the support of the President's private army (Dut ku Beny), was to get rid of the Nuer component of the Presidential Guard and clear all surrounding areas, mostly Khor William and Jebel neighborhoods, of Nuer.
Gen. Salva Mathok, the President's brother-in-law and immediate former Deputy Interior Minister commanded the Dut ku Beny unit that operated around the Presidency, the Ministerial Residential Area of Amarat, Thongping, and the expanse of the Ministries complex. His role was to kill former Vice President Riek Machar, former Unity State Governor Gen. Taban Deng Gai, and other senior Nuer military officers who were residing in and around the Amarat area. The plan was to kill those who put up resistance, arrest, and eventually contain all the Nuer who were residing there and executes them.
The third sector was commanded by the brutal Gen. Bol Akot and comprised Gudele and Mia Saba (107) suburbs northwest of Juba. These two suburbs were heavily settled and populated by the Nuer who needed to be neutralized and rendered militarily useless.
Gen. Garang Mabil was placed in charge of the fourth sector which encompassed Mangaten and New Site residential areas which were almost solely settled by the Nuer. The operational plan was quite clear and simple; Set up roadblocks all over Juba City and then send out the president's private army (Dut ku Beny), backed up by elements of the Presidential Guard and the National Security Services who would guide them, on house-to-house searches and targeted killings of Nuer peoples.
According to the eyewitness Tim Edwards, the author of Bloody Nile, Major Malang Kerubino, the son of deceased SPLM veteran Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, from 15 to 19 December 2013, headed a military company of about three hundred men under the overall command of Gen. Bol Akot and was allocated the operational area of Mia Saba (107) but later extended his operations to Suk Libya, Mangaten, Gudele, and surrounding suburbs. He shrewdly led the men under his command in the senseless but meticulous slaughter of Nuer men, women, and children. He also ordered the killings of innocent Nuer civilian by running them over with tanks and bulldozed many of them to death in their houses. On December 17, 2013, Maj. Malang and his unit killed and counted four hundred Nuer corpses. Days later when they congregated at their usual watering hole at De’Havana bar with his friends, they bragged about the numbers they had killed and who had killed more than the other over bottles of whisky. The next day a hangover Maj. Malang was at it yet again. He lured out two American brothers of South Sudanese Nuer origin from their hiding place and promised to take them to the safety of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) compound where thousands of other Nuer had sought safety. Lam Chuol Thichoung an ex-US Marine Corp and his brother Pal did not suspect Maj. Malang after all they were friends and shared the occasional drink. As soon as they directed Maj. Malang to the place where they were, and he picked them up, they were summarily executed with bullets to the back of their heads under Malang's command.
That evening Malang boasted, while drinking, that he had finally avenged his father whom he claimed had been killed by Nuer militia on the 10th of September 1999. The presidential guards setup roadblocks to screen the Nuer people while the president's private army Dut Ku Beny went on house-to-house raids and killing missions. By the afternoon of the 16th December 2013, the murderous death squads had now worked themselves into a frenzy and were vying to outdo one another to see who had carried out the most kills. The raids on Nuer homesteads and residential areas were now rather brazen and the killings more open. On the third and fourth day of the massacre, new diabolical depravities were added to the massacres. Looting, mass rape, killing of Nuer children, and robbery came into play by the now ‘victorious’ officers of the Dinka killing squads. In the Presidential residence, Lt. Colonel Lual Maroldit ordered the selection and isolation of the Nuer soldiers within his unit. Later more Nuer civilians, including women and children, who lived within the compound that housed the bodyguards and their families were rounded up and locked up with the soldiers who had earlier been arrested. They now amounted to twenty-one Nuer soldiers from the President's close protection unit and ninety civilians from the neighborhood of the Presidential residence in Amarat. They were all killed.
According to the eyewitness, it was in Munuki neighborhood that a young Nuer woman who was a deputy director in the National Government found her fate at the hand of a Dinka National Security Officer who had tried to court her in vain. The officer led his platoon to the home of the lady, kicked in the doors, put everybody at gunpoint, and tied them with nylon ropes including the elderly parents. He then ordered one of the soldiers to tear off the long dress the girl was wearing from the front. Four soldiers pinned her down by each limb and in the same motion folded her legs up her chest and tucked her knees into her armpits, spread-eagling her and exposing her most delicate parts for all, including her brothers and parents to see. Starting with the officer, they went ahead to rape her while hurling insults upon the family and the Nuer people in general. When they were done with her they killed all the inhabitants of the household while the now motionless, shattered, bleeding, and exposed lady watched helplessly. She had pleaded in vain for the lives of her siblings, parents, and relatives to be spared in exchange for hers. They moved the bodies of the now-dead people and the exhausted woman out of the house, piled them in a grass-thatched sitting area in the compound, and set them on fire. Another group of murderous Dinka soldiers would later find the young woman burnt through the torso with some ribs and intestines exposed but still alive and trying to drag herself out of the burning fire. One Dinka soldier in the second group shot her through the head and said "A ‘dog’ should have a painful death".
By December 19, 2013, Nuer corpses were everywhere. Hundreds of thousands of Nuer bodies were bundled onto Military Pickup trucks, heavy trucks, and any other available means and taken and dumped into the River Nile. The National Security members of the killer squads, being experts at killing and disposal of bodies, were familiar with the great increase in buoyancy attendant upon the decomposition of human bodies. So to make sure that the bodies did not float, they made sure that the internal cavities were all perforated and punctured before weighing them down. Mass graves were dug up in the New Site cemetery opposite the Bilpham SPLA General Headquarters and near another military facility behind the Jebel Kujur Mountain using graders and hydraulic excavators. In other parts of the city, the bodies were simply doused in fuel and set ablaze.
47,000 people were killed between 15 and 18 December 2013. The mass killings slowed down on December 19 and 20 as Dinka killing squads could barely find Nuer civilian in Juba.

## Uganda Involvement in the Nuer Massacre

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was one of the strongest allies of South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardiit. Kiir ran to Uganda to seek advice from Museveni every now and then before the Nuer Massacre. Museveni, a ruthless man who was known for his dictatorship and harsh treatment of his political opponent played a huge role in the disastrous tragedy inflicted on The Nuer. The Government of Ugandan deployed two battalions of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) in South Sudan shortly after the outbreak of the Nuer Massacre on 15 December 2013.
Within days of the outbreak of the Nuer Massacre in mid-December, Museveni announced that the deployment of the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) deployed to South Sudan was at Kiir's invitation to help in evacuating over 200,000 stranded Ugandan nationals and to secure strategic installations in Juba. However, several weeks into the operation, President Yoweri Museveni disclosed that the UPDF was also involved in combat operations alongside Kiir's government forces, a move that draw a lot of criticism from the international community. The UPDF's two battalions, helicopter gunships, heavy artillery, and tanks were instrumental in helping President Kiir's Dinka-SPLA soldiers retake cities held by Nuer forces affiliated with former Vice President Riek Machar.
Around the week of February 7, 2014, there was a report by experts from the UN De-mining workers about the use of Cluster Bombs by UPDF and SPLA against the Nuer fighters after the remnants of this type of weapons were found on Juba-Bor road 16 kilometers south of Bor where the fighting was intense. It was not known if the cluster bombs were dropped from the air or launched on the ground as the bomb split open and scattered bomblets over a vast area before its impact. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon released a statement condemning the use of the banned weapon in South Sudan. Human Rights Watch urged both President Kiir and President Museveni to investigate the reported use of cluster bombs and the persons responsible. The investigation was never carried out and neither Kiir nor Museveni acknowledged its use, instead, they both denied it despite all the evidence collected by the UN experts. The experts found cluster bombs remnants of up to eight RBK-250-275 and numerous quantities of AO-1SCh bomblets which they believed were dropped from the air by either a helicopter or fixed aircraft.
After previously denying their involvement in the South Sudan conflict, UPDF Spokesman Lt. Col. Paddy Ankunda admitted to Al Jazeera on January 16, 2014, that their forces were fighting alongside President Kiir's troops against the Nuer fighters in Bor town. The presence of Ugandan troops and their involvement in the conflict between Kiir's Dinka troops and Machar's Nuer white army sparked major diplomatic unrest. IGAD "Intergovernmental Authority on Development" condemned Ugandan troops' involvement and deemed it as "unbenevolent act" and "not helping" in their quest to bring peace and stability to South Sudan. Borge Brende Norwegian Foreign Minister urged President Museveni to start withdrawing his troops from Juba, Bor, and the surrounding areas. Rabie Abdelati, one of the top members of NCP stated that "South Sudan does not need Uganda's military help to solve its internal problems". Ethiopia strongly condemn Uganda's military operation in South Sudan.
Despite IGAD, Sudan, Ethiopia, and the international community urging Uganda to withdraw from South Sudan, the withdrawal didn't happen until October 2015, when Ugandan President Museveni started to withdraw his troops from South Sudan for the first time in two years and a half since their deployment on December 30, 2013. UPDF withdrawal came as a part of a peace agreement that was signed in August 2015 between President Kiir and his ex-vice President Machar to end the war and bring peace to their vulnerable country.