An Open Letter To Japanese Ambassador To Juba, South Sudan

Dear Mr. Kiya Masahiko and;

Maria Noel Vaeze, UN Women Program Division Director (UNWPDD).

Feb 25, 2016(Nyamilepedia) —– We the concern Ma’di community, the Native ethnic tribe of Nimule in particular and Ma’di mainland at large are extremely disturbed and disappointed by your mission’s distribution of agricultural tools to the Internally Displaced Persons [IDPs] in Nimule.

We see no reason why your Mission in South Sudan with the office of UNWPDD office headed by Maria Noel Vaeze should distribute agricultural tools to the IDPs currently forcing more new settlements in our land

The so called IDPs are gangs arming themselves with rifles and other automatic weaponries acquired from the current regimen and their presence in our land has contributed enormously to insecurity, and destruction of farming land by their cattle.
Therefore the so called IDPs should not be encouraged to extend their illegal settlement by providing them with such agricultural tools. This move by your Mission encouraging illegal Dinka land grabbers settling in Ma’di land will undermine the development policy of Japanese Government which since the end of Second World War has had a good track record in many foreign countries.

The same group of IDPs who tried to legitimize their illegal resettlement extension to Nimule, Mugali want to legalize their unwelcome stay which was justified by the former Interior Minister Aleu Ayieny Aleu, who during his visit to Nimule in October 2013, before the Dinka-Nuer conflict staged to cleanse the Nuer broke out demanded the IDPs be recognize as natives of Nimule. “There are no South Sudanese IDPs within the country. You cannot be an IDP in your own country,” he said. This move I believe was to position the Dinka in a secure, exit easy position in order to give way to the Juba massacre.

We the concern Ma’di in strongly possible term condemned the act of the Japanese Mission in South Sudan, that has so far portrayed a negative image of the Japanese government. We called up the Japanese Mission in South Sudan to retract its agricultural tools from the IDPs in Nimule and redirected such tools to the Ma’di natives who have the knowledge, the land and the skills for the rightful use of those tools.

We strongly urged the UN Women Program Director for South Sudan, Ms Maria Noel Vazae, to immediately repair the damage done for UN agents by repatriating the Dinka IDPs from Kakuma refugee camps, from Kenya in 2007 to Nimule. This happened when UN refugee agent very well knew Nimule belongs to Ma’di but chose to take bribes to re-settle the Dinka in other people’s land. And to this date the UN never took the blame for the chaos caused by IDPs

The agricultural equipments we are talking about were handed by Japanese Ambassador to South Sudan Kiya Masahiko and UN Women Program Division Director Maria Noel Vaeza on Tuesday 23 February 2016, the coverage later shown on SSTV.

The agricultural equipments are earmarked to women’s groups in Nimule in Eastern Equatoria State, not IDP women whose role in life is to milk cattle and look after cattle.
The equipment in question includes five community cereal grinding mills, four greenhouse kits and four units of one-acre drip irrigation kits as part of the UN Women Humanitarian Assistance program which is co-funded by the Government of Japan.

In conclusion, we want to caution the Japanese Mission in South Sudan and UN women program Director to South Sudan not to temper with People’s land by facilitating farming for squatters. They should strictly remaining doing their diplomatic Mission. Otherwise their action will amount to land grabbing by and distributing such equipments to IDPs without consultation from the land rightful owners. This will lead to generate circles of conflict over land. And should this happen we will hold the Japanese head of Mission Mr. Masahiko accountable.

Therefore to prevent the spill of our people blood, we call upon the Japanese Ambassador to South Sudan to immediately withhold sending such equipment to Nimule IDPs who have no agricultural land in Ma’di land.

We further urged the Japanese to encourage the IDPs to go back to their states to develop their own states since peace and calm has returned in our country.

David Aju Kanyara
Chairman of concern Ma’di community.
A voice of voiceless