February 12th 2020 (Nyamilepedia) – Rival protests have been staged in South Sudan’s capital Juba by people supporting and those against the controversial 32 states, several participants told Nyamilepedia this afternoon.
A government-organized protest demanding President Salva Kiir to reject any regional decision to decrease the number of states from 32 was going on in Juba according to one protester.
He said President Kiir should not listen to outsiders, referring to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development which mediated the revitalized peace agreement.
The regional bloc also proposed the establishment of 23 states or the return to 10 states during a meeting conducted in Addis Ababa over the weekend.
“We are coming out today to tell the government that it should not hear what is being said by the IGAD that we should come to 23 or to ten states,” the Ajang Acuil, a protester support the 32 states said from Juba.
“What matters is what the citizen of this country are demanding not what foreigners in the IGAD want,” he added.
Protest demanding the return to the 10 states or 23 were staged at several IDPs camps in the country including in the capital Juba. They said return to ten states or establishment of 23 states instead would ensure peace return to the world’s youngest nation.
A participant said the region should instead listen to the most vulnerable people who have been displaced by the 6-year-old civil war because they are the most affected and that the return to ten states or the establishment of 23 states would mean peace which would guarantee their return to their homes.
“This is a message that we would like to communicate to the world. South Sudan is in war and one of the reasons war would continue is the continued grabbing of land in favor of other citizens,” the participant said angrily.
“This issue of state will further threaten our situation and will shatter our hope of returning because as long as those many states are there, we would not have the place to return because our land has been given to others,” he said,
