Outcry as 10 people go missing in Bentiu IDP camp
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Bentiu have raised an alarm over suspected forced military conscription in the camp.
They said about 10 youths and some adults have disappeared from camps and the whereabouts remain unclear.
The youth chairperson at the IDP camp, Kalany Bolis Kueth, alleged that the youth are always picked up at around the evening hours by ‘men in uniforms’ suspected 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.
More allegations
Kueth said one of the visually impaired people was taken to the airport, and when they reached the airstrip, the person started crying, and they abandoned him at the airstrip.
Kueth said that despite several complaints from the IDPs, authorities in Bentiu are not doing anything.
Madiet Goal, 18, who managed to escape said, ‘‘They took us to the southern part of the internally displaced camp and detained us there the whole night.’’
“The following morning when they came back to take us to the barracks, they called us one after another one, and they tied our hands,” he narrated
According to Goal, he was left behind and when it was his turn to get out of the container, he tried to delay but was later picked up by one of the officers.
“Before my hands were tied, I decided to run, but they caught my hands. Then I pulled out all the clothes, even the vest inside, and then I started running. That is how I escaped.,” he narrated to The City Review through a WhatsApp interview.
When contacted, the Spokesperson for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPA-IO), Col Lam Paul Gabriel, said the cantonment areas are open to international partners and SSPDF and UNMISS can go and verify for themselves if they have any new recruitments.
“The information we have is that these kids are being flown out of Bentiu. “We don’t own a plane and we don’t control any airstrip, so whoever is in control of the airstrip and has access to the plane should explain this allegation,” Lam said.
“These allegations are just meant to balance the situation, but let’s be sincere, I believe even everyone who is in Rubkona or the PoCs knows exactly who is carrying out the arrest because there is no way the SPLA-IO [can] pressurise anyone; we are very far away from Rubkona,” he stressed.
However, the SSPDF spokesperson, Maj. Gen Lul Ruai accepted to comment on the allegation but requested more time to get details from the ground.
