Bentiu IDPs demand answers over illegal ‘military recruitment’
Over 500 youth from Bentiu’s internally displaced communities hit the streets on Friday to protest the alleged abduction of children by armed forces within local camps.
The peaceful demonstration was aimed at stopping child abductions and the forceful recruitment of children to military bases.
The Youth Forum chairperson at the Internally Displaced Persons camp (IDP), Kalany Bolies Kueth, vowed to continue raising awareness about the concerns of people.
“I will never stop raising the concerns about what is happening in the IDP camp because it has been long and we have been observing and waiting for an intervention from our leaders, but there was no intervention and for that reason, we do not have to keep quiet,” he said
Kueth said the IDPs are living in what he described as intoxicated areas that lack hygiene.
“They are dying of hepatitis E and cholera. Children who are in the candidate classes and their teachers are being abducted and forcefully recruited as soldiers, taken for a fight in other states, ” he said.
Kueth added that the communities in the state has been subjected to suffering since the war broke out in the country.
He said they have been feeding on less food, taking dirty water and begging day and night for humanitarian support.
Action needed
“Their homes are flooded with water and there is no response from the national level. Today you are abducting our children who are constructing local dykes for the communities, and you are taking them to respond to war across the country? No, no,” Kueth said.
He urged the leaders to intervene for peace to prevail in the state.
However, the Chairperson of Youth in Unity State, John Dak, dismissed the allegations of military conscription.
He said there are some people who have decided to become soldiers and have been given the titles of the army.
“Some people just leave their homes and go to the military camps, asking to become soldiers, and after that, those people are gathered together, and this is not the government’s doing. There is no one who wants to collect children to become military personnel,” Dak said.
Last week, Kueth alleged that 10 children and some adults went missing from the camps, and their whereabouts remain unclear.
He claimed that the youth were always picked up around the evening hours by “men in uniforms,” who were thought to be security personnel.
“They could come at evening hours, and they look at the age [and focus on] not even the older people because they know that the adults can return and that is why they take the young ones of 15, 16, and 17 years old,” Kueth claimed.
Kueth said those who were taken and were able to make phone calls confirmed to them that they were taken to the barracks and others to unknown locations.
“Some are now calling from different locations, and others are now calling from Yei and from Magenis, and they don’t know where they were taken,” he stated.
“We came to realise that the issue was getting serious when we started receiving phone calls from those who were taken, and it has now been more than two weeks,” Kueth said.
He revealed that about 10 students have been reported missing, and others are adults, including teachers and nurses.
