# 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 (Dut Ku Beny), supported by Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF), 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 the Upper Nile.
The Nuer massacre sparked a wave of widespread anger among the Nuer people in Jonglei, Upper Nile, and Unity States 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 February 2013, President Salva Kiir Mayardiit retired his fellow SPLA military generals mostly the Nuer from their duty. By July 2013, President Kiir dismissed his entire cabinet by presidential decree including his vice president Riek Machar and SPLM party secretary general Pagan Amum shortly after Machar announced he would contest Kiir for the 2015 South Sudan general election which was then postponed in May 2014. Concerns about possible political instability have been raised by the sackings in this young country that is torn apart by ethnic communal conflicts, and still recovering from decades of Sudanese second civil war.
According to Clemence Pinaud, an Associate Professor at Indiana University Bloomington, the move was ethnically motivated and highly influenced by the Jieng Council of Elders to oppose the democratic transition of power in the young nation. The Jieng Council of Elders, which is a political council made of Dinka elders and tribal leaders, intervened in the politics of the country which then shaped the government into a "Dinka ethnocracy-led government".
After Riek Machar announced that he would run for presidency in the 2015 general election, 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 or Tiger battalion, outside of the normal SPLA structure and placed them under Gen. Paul Malong Awan, Governor of Northern Bahr el Ghazal state. The Tiger battalion goes by different names, such as "Dut Ku Beny," meaning rescue the President in Dinka language, or Mathiang Anyoor, meaning Brown Caterpillar. The Tiger battalion, an irregular force outside South Sudan's conventional military, which were trained, armed, and supported by Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) prior to the massacre.
Halfway through 2013, South Sudan's allies were profoundly concerned and focused on the country's political turmoil. The United States and the European Union advised both leaders of South Sudan's SPLM ruling party, President Kiir and former Vice President Machar, to maintain calm and prevent violence between their two largest ethnic groups.

## 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 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. During the night 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 battalion 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 on the morning of December 16, 2013, with groups of politicians and SPLA military generals where he announced a simulated military insurrection by Riek Machar which he baptized as a coup and which Machar strongly refuted. President Kiir also announced a curfew in Juba between 6 A.M and 6 P.M.
The Nuer massacre was carried out on a massive scale of door-to-door operation. 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. 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 killings, 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. In the Presidential residence, Lt. Colonel Lual Maroldit ordered the isolation of twenty-one Nuer soldiers within the presidential protection unit and their families. They were rounded up and massacred together with ninety Nuer civilians from the neighborhood of the Presidential residence in Amarat. According to UNMISS report, 200 - 300 Nuer bodies were found in Juba Teaching Hospital on December 17. 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. 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. In other parts of the city, the bodies were simply doused in fuel and set ablaze.
On December 17, 2013, Maj. Malang Kerubino, the son of deceased SPLM veteran Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, and his unit under the overall command of Gen. Bol Akot killed and counted four hundred Nuer corpses around the area of Mia Saba (107), Suk Libya, Mangaten, and Gudele, according to the eyewitness Tim Edwards, the author of Bloody Nile. His victims include two American brothers of South Sudanese Nuer origin: Lam Chuol Thichoung an ex-United States Marine and his brother Pal.
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 United Nations Mission in South Sudan 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 Gadet 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 a Human Rights Watch agent who interviewed seven survivors of Gudele massacre.
Ivan Šimonović, a Human Rights Watch official in the United Nations 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 committed by his own SPLA soldiers".

## Casualties

In span of four days, more than 47,000 Nuer civilians were massacred between December 15 and December 18, 2013 in Juba. 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 the Greater Upper Nile. Between December 2013 - May 2021, The New York Times estimated 400,000 thousands people dead and the UNHCR estimated 2.24 million people displaced across South Sudan.

## 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 Ring Deng, Gen. Marial Chanoung, the head of the Presidential Guard, Salva Mathok the President's brother-in-law, Gen. Bona Bhang Dhol and the members of Jieng Council of Elders (JCE), Major. Malang Kerubino 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.

### Uganda Involvement in the Nuer Massacre

Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni was one of the strongest allies of South Sudan President Salva Kiir Mayardit. 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 Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) into South Sudan on December 19, 2013, 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 drew 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 from United Nations 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. Børge 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 condemns 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.

## Aftermath
### Reaction

The Nuer massacre was termed as ethnic cleansing by several organisation including the United Nations. Priti Patel, UK secretary of state, branded this kind of targeted mass killings based on ethnic line as "genocide".
Speaking to tens of thousands of people from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica in his first "Urbi et Orbi" message themed around peace, which he dedicated to countries plagued by conflict, Pope Francis called for "social harmony in South Sudan, where current tensions have already caused numerous victims and are threatening peaceful coexistence in that young state".
Hilde Frafjord Johnson, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, issued a statement shortly after the fighting erupted in Juba that "the UNMISS was deeply concerned about the fighting" and "urged all parties to cease hostility". As part of their seven-month investigation into the South Sudan conflict, the UN Commission on Human Rights described the incident as "teetering on the edge of genocide and experiencing ethnic cleansing, a stark portrayal of a nation that is now deep into civil war". According to U.N. officials, "perpetrators of these human rights violations should be held accountable; otherwise, the viability of South Sudan as a new nation-state will be jeopardized".
Following two weeks of intense fighting, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) issued a four-day ultimatum to the warring factions in South Sudan to stop fighting, threatening to "take action" to end hostilities if the parties failed to cease their hostilities. "They would not accept a violent overthrow of the country's democratically elected government, and stated that any change had to occur through the democratic process," the leaders of the IGAD warned in their joint statement.
The United States Embassy in South Sudan released a statement that it had received "reports from multiple reliable sources of ongoing security incidents and sporadic gunfire in multiple locations" across Juba and the embassy recommends that "all U.S. citizens should exercise extra caution at all times. The Embassy will continue to monitor the security environment in South Sudan closely, with particular attention to Juba City and its surrounding areas." On December 17, 2013, the embassy tweeted on its official Twitter account that all of its citizens in the country should "depart immediately". Following an attack on three US aircraft attempting to evacuate American nationals from South Sudan, President Obama wrote to top US congressional leaders, stating that he may take "further action" to safeguard American citizens and interests.
On December 19, 2013, the British government announced that as the violence worsened, it would deploy an airplane to remove its citizens from Juba. The decision to temporarily remove certain employees and dependents from the British Embassy in South Sudan was made by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which has issued a travel advisory for Juba and other areas of the country.

### Impact

In 2019, a scientific research conducted by the Swedish University on grassroots-level dehumanization in the South Sudan conflict between the two largest ethnic groups, the Dinka and the Nuer suggests that there was a dehumanization attitude involved in the conflict, citing the December 15, 2013, Nuer massacre in Juba as the main source. The outcome of the study demonstrated mechanistic dehumanization by the Dinka participants toward the Nuer, but no such kind of dehumanization was found among the Nuer toward the Dinka, although there were clear signs of intergroup bias in the conflict.
In 2024, another scientific study on refugees in Uganda revealed that Nuer are being targetted more than other ethnic Groups. Specifically, 45.7% of Nuer respondents reported knowing someone who was killed enroute to Uganda, compared to 9.2% of Dinka. Additionally, 33.7% of Nuer experienced injuries, versus 9% of Dinka. Furthermore, 70.2% of Nuer saw soldiers, while only 34.6% of Dinka did. This indicates that Nuer individuals faced more frequent exposure to violence during their journey, further highlighting the lingering impact of December 15 massacre on the Nuer population in the region.