“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice but there must never be a time when we fail to protest” His Comradeship,
By Khalid Ono Loki,
SPLA Military Judge Advocate,
Feb 20, 2017(Nyamilepedia) ——-His Comradeship, this letter serves to notify you that I have resolved to resign from all the responsibilities shouldered upon me as the Head of Military Courts as well as from the SPLA rank and file.
As per the terms of my employment, I am bound to follow merely the regulations, laws and the state constitution to the zenith, albeit your office has not been co-operating en route for realization of my responsibilities; instead, it is paddling against the current and contrary to this veracity.
Since, the dawn of our independence, and ever since I joined this institution, I have never ever once felt justice served as expected in the interior of the military and civil courts of all directions. These judicial courts have un-controllably failed to achieve the long anticipated logo of generations- the justice. However, I had accepted the challenge on the view to help change it into better but regretfully the system seems “too deformed to be reformed.”
Mr. Chief, you have often avoided the current courts and instead tried officers on your own whilst crafting and forming alien ones paradoxical to the established courts which are in conformity with the law. Your un-qualified clique of friends and relatives who dangerously arrest and sentence soldiers and civilians as you so wish and command have never attended any law school to carry out such responsibilities.
Un-specified and un-stipulated arrests and detentions have been fluctuating from months to years without investigation and scrutiny yet on fabricated cases against individuals of non-Dinka ethnicity, registering a serious violation of their rights and converse to the operating laws (See Rules and Regulations section 47; Laws of Southern Sudan, SPLA Act, 2009, chap vi, Art. 34: 1,2,3 & 4; 35:1,2,3 & 4). You have, in many occasions, prevented and obstructed the Military Attorney General to inspect and look at the conditions, the legality and/or extent of validity of charges spelled against the detainees, predominantly, from the high ranking officers.
Evidently, this passage has become a habit though incompatible with the law. In your relentless endeavours to protect your own ethnicity, and founded on no single law, you always freeze and/or abolish court issuances and rulings even of murder, rape and theft cases etc. Surprisingly, and at times, a judge is confronted with the convicts free from cells/prisons only to be cognizant later that your office discharged them without a single right that the law gives you neither with our consency.
Funny enough, when you inquire of the convict, you are shortly told that “Zol Kabir GENERAL HEADQUARTERS OFFICE OF DIRECTORATE FOR MILITARY JUSTICE released me” not knowing who zol kabir is. Furthermore, Mr. Chief, you have ordered arrests of civilians in military jails exterior of proper legal channels and echelons.
We are often alerted of the danger of banking foreign services operative in the skirts of army barracks, yet, you compromised this illegal activity just to ensure the flow of your own money. As asserted by Gen. Thomas Cirilo, in his recent resignation, you have indeed brought shame and un-familiar ethos to South Sudan that will only lead the country into more calamities.
If I were you, I would resign from the army leadership and apologize to the peoples of South Sudan. Basing on these and nutshell of evidences, Mr. Chief, I have provided herein, I can no longer continue with such a corrupt, ethicised and un-ethical institution.
Signed by,
Col. LLB Khalid Ono Loki Judge Advocate Head,
Military Courts SPLA, GHQs, Bilpam
Cc: – Specialized Units
