Archive for April 6, 2012


How I am Celebrating My Good Friday!!

By PaanLuel Wel.

According to the (Gregorian) Christian’s calendar introduced to the world by Pope Gregory XIII on  24 February 1582, which is currently the best known calendar around the world, today marks the day on which Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jewish teacher of morality considered by some people to be a god, was supposed to have been crucified on the cross for the sin of humanity. The day is better known to this generation as the Good Friday–Good because it is, Christians believe,  the day on which human’s blood was shed to clean human’s sin.

Essentially, it is about the ancient ritual of blood sacrifice practice by all human all over the world from immemorial time till modernity recently reduced or ended it. Still, the thought that the ancient ritual of blood sacrifice could form the foundation of Christianity--presently the largest organized human religion in the World–and that it still hold such a sway among human race in this 21st century is mindbogglingly worrisome.

For my fellow atheists–did I mention that we have no original sin to be atoned–around the world whose today Bible readings may not give them the true evolutionary trajectory and meaning of this day of “Pious Atrocities” in human history, I would recommend (re) reading of Sam Harris’s Afterword to his bestselling book: Letter to a Christian Nation:

LETTER TO A CHRISTIAN NATION: AFTERWORD

Humanity has had a long fascination with blood sacrifice. In fact, it has been by no means uncommon for a child to be born into this world only to be patiently and lovingly reared by religious maniacs, who believe that the best way to keep the sun on its course or to ensure a rich harvest is to lead him by tender hand into a field or to a mountaintop and bury, butcher, or burn him alive as offering to an invisible God. Countless children have been unlucky enough to be born in so dark an age, when ignorance and fantasy were indistinguishable from knowledge and where the drumbeat of religious fanaticism kept perfect time with every human heart. In fact, almost no culture has been exempt from this evil: the Sumerians, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Hebrews, Canaanites, Maya, Inca, Aztecs, Olmecs, Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, Teutons, Celts, Druids, Vikings, Gauls, Hindus, Thais, Chinese, Japanese, Scandinavians, Maoris, Melanesias, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Balinese, Australian aborigines, Iroquois, Huron, Cherokee, and innumerable other societies ritually murdered their fellow human beings because they believed that invisible gods and goddesses, having an appetite for human flesh, could be so propitiated. Many of their victims were of the same opinion, in fact, and went willingly to slaughter, fully convinced that their deaths would transform the weather, or cure the king of his venereal disease, or in some other way spare their fellows the wrath of the Unseen.

In many societies, whenever a new building was constructed, it was thought only prudent to pacify the local deities by burying children alive beneath its foundations (this is how faith sometimes operates in a world without structural engineers). Many societies regularly sacrificed virgins to ward off floods. Others killed their first-born children, and even ate them, as a way of ensuring a mother’s ongoing fertility. In India, living infants were ritually fed to sharks at the mouth of the Ganges for the same purpose. Indians also burned widows alive so that they could follow their husbands into the next world. Leaving nothing to chance, Indians also sowed their fields with the flesh of a certain caste of men, raised especially for this purpose and dismembered while alive, to ensure that every crop of tumeric would be appropriately crimson. The British were actually hard pressed to put an end to these pious atrocities.

In some cultures whenever a nobleman died, other men and women allowed themselves to be buried alive so as to serve as his retainers in the next world. In ancient Rome, children were occasionally slaughtered so that the future could be read in their entrails. Some Fijian prodigy devised a powerful sacrament called “Vakatoga” which required that a victim’s limbs be cut off and eaten while he watched. Among the Iroquois, prisoners taken captive in war were often permitted to live among the tribe for many years, and even to marry, all the while being doomed to be flayed alive as an oblation to the God of War; whatever children they produced while in captivity were disposed of in the same ritual. Certain African tribes have a long history of murdering people to send as couriers in a one-way dialogue with their ancestors or to convert their body parts into magical charms. Ritual murders of this sort continue in many African societies to this day. [1]

It is essential to realize that such obscene misuses of human life have always been explicitly religious. They are the product of what people think they know about invisible gods and goddesses, and of what they manifestly do not know about biology, meteorology, medicine, physics, and a dozen other specific sciences that have more than a little to say about the events in the world that concern them. And it is astride this contemptible history of religious atrocity and scientific ignorance that Christianity now stands as an absurdly unselfconscious apotheosis. The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a “loving” God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the superstitious bloodletting that has plagued bewildered people throughout history.

Of course, the God of Abraham was no stranger to ritual murder. Occasionally, He condemns the practice (Deuteronomy 12:31; Jeremiah 19:4-5; Ezekial 16:20-21); at other points, He requires or rewards it (Exodus 22:29-30; Judges 11:29-40; 1 Kings 13:1-2; 2 Kings 3:27; 2 Kings 23:20-25; Numbers 31:40, Deuteronomy 13:13-19). In the case of Abraham, God demands that he sacrifice his son Isaac but then stays his hand at the last moment (Genesis 22:1-18), without ever suggesting that the act of slaughtering one’s own child is immoral. Elsewhere, God confesses to inspiring human sacrifice soas to defile its practitioners (Ezekiel 20:26), while getting into the act Himself by slaying the firstborn of Egypt (Exodus 11:5). The rite of circumcision emerges as a surrogate for child sacrifice (Exodus 4:24-26), and God seems to generally encourage the substitution of animals for people. Indeed, His thirst for the blood of animals, as well as His attentiveness to the niceties of their slaughter and holocaust, is almost impossible to exaggerate.

Upon seeing Jesus for the first time, John the Baptist is rumored to have said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). For most Christians, this bizarre opinion still stands, and it remains the core of their faith. Christianity is more or less synonymous with the proposition that the crucifixion of Jesus represents a final, sufficient offering of blood to a God who absolutely requires it (Hebrews 9:22-28). Christianity amounts to the claim that we must love and be loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man—his son, incidentally—in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others.

Let the good news go forth: we live in a cosmos, the vastness of which we can scarcely even indicate in our thoughts, on a planet teeming with creatures we have only begun to understand, but the whole project was actually brought to a glorious fulfillment over twenty centuries ago, after one species of primate (our own) climbed down out of the trees, invented agriculture and iron tools, glimpsed (as through a glass, darkly) the possibility of keeping its excrement out of its food, and then singled out one among its number to be viciously flogged and nailed to a cross.

Add to this abject mythology surrounding one man’s death by torture—Christ’s passion—the symbolic cannibalism of the Eucharist. Did I say “symbolic”? Sorry, according to the Vatican it is most assuredly not symbolic. In fact, the judgment of the Council of Trent remains in effect:

I likewise profess that in the Mass a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice is offered to God on behalf of the living and the dead, and that the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is truly, really, and substantially present in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, and that there is a change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into blood; and this change the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. I also profess that the whole and entire Christ and a true sacrament is received under each separate species.

Of course, Catholics have done some very strenuous and unconvincing theology in this area, in an effort to make sense of how they can really eat the body of Jesus, not mere crackers enrobed in metaphor, and really drink his blood without, in fact, being a cult of crazy cannibals. Suffice it to say, however, that a world view in which “propitiatory sacrifices on behalf of the living and the dead” figure prominently is rather difficult to defend in the year 2007. But this has not stopped otherwise intelligent and well-intentioned people from defending it.

And now we learn that even Mother Teresa, the most celebrated exponent of this dogmatism in a century, had her doubts all the while—about the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, about heaven, and even about the existence of God:

Lord, my God, who am I that You should forsake me? The Child of your Love — and now become as the most hated one — the one — You have thrown away as unwanted — unloved. I call, I cling, I want — and there is no One to answer — no One on Whom I can cling — no, No One. — Alone … Where is my Faith — even deep down right in there is nothing, but emptiness & darkness — My God — how painful is this unknown pain — I have no Faith — I dare not utter the words & thoughts that crowd in my heart — & make me suffer untold agony.
So many unanswered questions live within me afraid to uncover them — because of the blasphemy — If there be God — please forgive me — When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven — there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives & hurt my very soul. — I am told God loves me — and yet the reality of darkness & coldness & emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul. Did I make a mistake in surrendering blindly to the Call of the Sacred Heart?

— addressed to Jesus, at the suggestion of a confessor, undated

Mother Teresa’s recently published letters reveal a mind riven by doubt (and well it should have been). They also reveal a woman who was surely suffering from run-of-the-mill depression, though even secular commentators have begun to politely dress this fact in the colors of the saints and martyrs. Mother Teresa’s response to her own bewilderment and hypocrisy (her term) reveals just how like quicksand religious faith can be. Her doubts about God’s existence were interpreted by her confessor as a sign that she was now sharing Christ’s torment upon the cross; this exaltation of her wavering faith allowed her “to love the darkness” she experienced in God’s apparent absence. Such is the genius of the unfalsifiable. We can see the same principle at work among her fellow Catholics: Mother Teresa’s doubts have only enhanced her stature in the eyes of the Church, being interpreted as a further confirmation of God’s grace. Ask yourself, when even the doubts of experts are taken to confirm a doctrine, what could possibly disconfirm it?

It has been more than a year since Letter to a Christian Nation was published, and the book has continued to draw steady fire. Much of the criticism leveled at it has been bundled with attacks upon my first book, The End of Faith, and upon other atheist bestsellers: especially Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and Christopher Hitchens’God Is Not Great. In fact, Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, and I have been regularly assailed as though we were a single person with four heads. The accusations and arguments against us are always the same, and they always miss the point. Indeed, what is most surprising about debating the faithful is how few surprises there are.

The Problem with Moderate Religion
Whenever nonbelievers like myself criticize Christians for believing in the imminent return of Christ, or Muslims for believing in martyrdom, religious moderates declare that we have caricatured Christianity and Islam, taken “extremists” to be representative of these “great” religions, or otherwise overlooked a shimmering ocean of nuance. We are invariably told that a mature understanding of scripture renders faith perfectly compatible with reason, and that our attacks upon religion are, therefore, “simplistic,” “dogmatic,” or even “fundamentalist.”

But there are several problems with such a defense of religion. First, many moderates (and even some secularists) assume that religious “extremism” is rare and therefore not all that consequential. But religious extremism is not rare, and it is hugely consequential. America is now a nation of 300 million souls, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet 240 million of these souls apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers. This hankering for a denominational, spiritual oblivion is extreme in almost every sense—it is extremely silly, extremely dangerous, extremely worthy of denigration—but it is not extreme in the sense of being rare. Of course, moderates may wonder whether as many people believe such things as say they do. In fact, many atheists are confident that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually think in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most Americans reliablyclaim to believe the preposterous, and these claims themselves have done genuine harm to our political discourse, to our public policy, and to our reputation in the world.

Religious moderates also tend to imagine that there is some bright line of separation between extremist and moderate religion. But there isn’t. Scripture itself remains a perpetual engine of extremism: because, while He may be many things, the God of the Bible and the Qur’an is not a moderate. Reading scripture more closely, one does not find reasons to be a religious moderate; one finds reasons to be a proper religious lunatic—to fear the fires of hell, to despise nonbelievers, to persecute homosexuals, etc. Of course, anyone can cherry-pick scripture and find reasons to love his neighbor and to turn the other cheek. But the more fully a person grants credence to these books, the more he will be convinced that infidels, heretics, and apostates deserve to be smashed to atoms in God’s loving machinery of justice.

Religious moderates invariably claim to be more “sophisticated” than religious fundamentalists (and atheists). But how does one become a sophisticated believer? By acknowledging just how dubious many of the claims of scripture are, and thereafter reading it selectively, bowdlerizing it if need be, and allowing its assertions about reality to be continually trumped by fresh insights—scientific (“You mean the world isn’t 6000 years old? Okay.”), medical (“I should take my daughter to a neurologist and not to an exorcist? Seems reasonable…”), and moral (“I can’t beat my slaves? I can’t even keep slaves? Hmm…”). There is a pattern here, and it is undeniable. Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit that the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings?

Another problem with religious moderation is that it represents precisely the sort of thinking that will prevent a rational and nondenominational spirituality from ever emerging in our world. Whatever is true about us, spiritually and ethically, must be discoverable now. Consequently, it makes no sense at all to have one’s spiritual life pegged to rumors of ancient miracles. What we need is a discourse about ethics and spiritual experience that is as unconstrained by ancient ignorance as the discourse of science already is. Science really does transcend the vagaries of culture: there is no such thing as “Japanese” as opposed to “French” science; we don’t speak of “Hindu biology” and “Jewish chemistry.” Imagine a world in which we could have a truly honest and open-ended conversation about our place in the universe and about the possibilities of deepening our self-understanding, ethical wisdom, and compassion. By living as if some measure of sectarian superstition were essential for human happiness, religious moderates prevent such a conversation from ever taking shape.

Intellectual Honesty
Religion once offered answers to many questions that have now been ceded to the care of science. This process of scientific conquest and religious forfeiture has been relentless, one directional, and utterly predictable. As it turns out, real knowledge, being both valid and verifiable across cultures, is the only remedy for religious discord. Muslims and Christians cannot disagree about the causes of cholera, for instance, because whatever their traditions might say about infectious disease, a genuine understanding of cholera has arrived from another quarter. Epidemiology trumps religious superstition (eventually), especially when people are watching their children die. This is where our hope for a truly nonsectarian future lies: when things matter, people tend to want to understand what is actually going on in the world. Science delivers this understanding in torrents; it also offers an honest appraisal of its current limitations. Religion fails on both counts.

Hoping to reconcile their faith with our growing scientific understanding of the world, many believers have taken refuge in Stephen J. Gould’s quisling formulation of “non-overlapping magisteria”—the idea that science and religion, properly construed, cannot be in conflict, because they represent different domains of expertise. Let’s see how this works: while science is the best authority on the workings of physical universe, religion is the best authority on… what exactly? The non-physical universe? Probably not. What about meaning, values, ethics, and the good life? Unfortunately, most people—even most scientists and secularists—have ceded these essential components of human happiness to the care of theologians and religious apologists without argument. This has kept religion in good standing even while its authority has been battered and nullified on every other front.

But what special competence does a priest, rabbi, or imam have to judge the ethical implications of embryonic stem-cell research, family planning, or preventative war? The truth is that a person’s knowledge of a scriptural tradition is no more relevant to ethics than it is to astronomy. Representatives of the world’s religions can tell us what their congregations believe on wide variety of issues (and believe, generally, on bad evidence); they can tell us what their holy books say one ought to believe to escape the fires of hell; but what they cannot do—or cannot do better than butchers, bakers, and candle-stick makers—is offer an account of why these orthodox positions are ethical. Is it ethical to kill a person for changing his religion? I’d stake my life that the answer is “no.” But, according to a recent poll, thirty-six percent of British Muslims (ages 16-24) disagree with me. [2] As it turns out, they are on firm ground theologically: for while the Qur’an does not explicitly demand the murder of apostates, the sacred literature of the hadithdoes, repeatedly and without equivocation. Is this edict ethical? Is it compatible with civil society? Is the reliance upon authority that has delivered this barbarism down through the generations even remotely compatible with science?

It is, of course, trivially true to say that religion and science are compatible because some scientists are (or claim to be) religious. But this is like saying that science and ignorance are compatible because many scientists freely admit their ignorance on a wide range of topics. To clarify these issues, it is helpful to remind ourselves that both religion and science are constituted by beliefs and their justification, or lack thereof. Is there a conflict between justified and unjustified belief? Of course, and it is zero-sum. Given that faith is generally nothing more than the permission religious people give one another to believe things strongly without evidence, a conflict between science and religion is unavoidable.

Religion and science are also in conflict because there is no way of disentangling religious and scientific truth-claims: the belief that Jesus was born of a virgin may be central to the doctrine of Christianity, but it is also an explicit claim about biology; the belief that Jesus will physically return to earth in the future entails a variety of claims about history, the human survival of death, and, apparently, the mechanics of human flight without the aid of technology. It is time that all rational people acknowledged that where claims about the nature of reality are concerned, there is only one magisterium.

The Empty Wager 
The fundamental problem with religion is that it is built, to a remarkable degree, upon lies.  I refer not merely to twenty-megaton displays of hypocrisy, as when Evangelical preachers get caught with male prostitutes or methamphetamine (or both). Rather, I refer to the daily and ubiquitous failure of most religious people to admit that the basic claims of the their faith are profoundly suspect. Mommy claims to know that Granny went straight to heaven after she died. But Mommy doesn’t actually know this. The truth is that Mommy is lying—either to herself or to her children—and most of us have agreed to view this behavior as perfectly normal. Rather than teach our children to grieve, and to be happy despite the reality of death, we nourish their powers of self-deception.

How likely is it that Jesus was really born of a virgin, rose from the dead, and will bodily return to earth at some future date? How reasonable is it to believe in such a concatenation of miracles on the basis of the Gospel account? How much support do these doctrines receive from the average Christian’s experience in church? Honest answers to these questions should raise a tsunami of doubt. I’m not sure what will be “Christian” about any Christians left standing.

Many readers of Letter to a Christian Nation have taken inspiration from Blaise Pascal and argued that evidence is beside the point and that religious believers have simply taken the wiser of two bets: if a believer is wrong about God, there is not much harm to him or to anyone else, and if he is right, he wins eternal happiness; if an atheist is wrong, however, he is destined to spend eternity in hell. On this view, atheism is the very picture of reckless stupidity.

While Pascal deserves his reputation as a brilliant mathematician, his wager was never more than a cute (and false) analogy. Like many cute ideas in philosophy, it is easily remembered and often repeated, and this has lent it an undeserved air of profundity. A moment’s thought reveals that if the wager were valid, it could justify almost any belief system, no matter how ludicrous or antithetical to Christianity. Another problem with the wager—and it is a problem that infects religious thinking generally—is its suggestion that a rational person can knowingly will himself to believe a proposition for which he has no evidence. A person can profess any creed he likes, of course, but to really believe it, he must believe that it is true. To believe that there is a God, for instance, is to believe that you are not just fooling yourself; it is to believe that you stand in some relation to God’s existence such that, if He didn’t exist, you wouldn’t believe in him. How does Pascal’s wager fit into this scheme? It doesn’t.

The reasons to doubt the existence of God are in plain view for everyone to see: everyone can see that the Bible is not the perfect word of an omniscient deity; everyone can see that there is no evidence for a God who answers prayers and that any God who would grant prayers for football championships, while doling out cancer and car accidents to little boys and girls, is unworthy of our devotion. Everyone who has eyes to see can see that if the God of Abraham exists, He is an utter psychopath—and the God of Nature is too. If you can’t see these things just by looking, you have simply closed your eyes to the realities of our world.

I have no doubt that many Christians find great consolation in their faith. But faith is not the best source of consolation. Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms. The victim’s gratitude is perfectly understandable, but absolutely misplaced. We are the source of the love that our priests and pastors attribute to God (how else can we feel it?). Your own consciousness is the cause and substance of any experience you might want to deem “spiritual” or “mystical.” Realizing this, what possible need is there to pretend to be certain about ancient miracles?
Sam Harris
September 2007
New York

http://www.samharris.org/site/full_text/afterword-to-the-vintage-books-edition


Dear all,
please find attached.

Thanks
Anwar Elhaj
SPLMN Representative to the US

 
Yasir Arman : The imminent death of IDPs as a result of endless and failed negotiations with Khartoum is a disgrace and will rest on the conscience of the international community
 
London: By Ammar Adam
Arman explained on the phone that the ongoing and protracted talks between the international community and the Khartoum government on the delivery of food to the displaced in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile contributes in providing a necessary cover for the rulers of Khartoum to evade their responsibilities towards its citizens.  Arman said that the time is going quickly, the rainy season is approaching, and the government air force is continuing its aerial bombardment of civilians coupled with a continuous campaign and mobilization of its militias that are trained to commit war crimes and have never engaged in clean war before. The Khartoum government is buying time and using the ongoing talks with the international community as a pretext and cover for not allowing humanitarian aid to the displaced while there is total silence from the international community.
Arman noted that the time has come to mobilize the maximum possible efforts of Sudanese inside and outside of Sudan and friends of Sudan to use all possible and available means of pressure to stop the crime that has been ongoing for the last ten months and which is intended to systematically deny access of humanitarian assistance to the displaced and kill them by war and mass starvation. Arman added that it is time to organize a strong campaign, especially in the USA and Europe, in solidarity with the friends of Sudan to shed more light on the war crimes in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile and went on to say that this is particularly important when war crimes that include prisoners of war are talked about publicly and are not just mere allegations by the SPLMN and the Sudan Revolutionary Front but an admission by one of the leading war criminals, Ahmed Haroun, who is ironically a graduate of law school.
Mr. Arman said that he wanted to draw attention to one of the major cases of human rights violations in Sudan, which are the ongoing trials of prisoners of war and civilians, which violate all international laws that safeguard the safety and rights of prisoners of war.  The arbitrary trials sentenced 19 of the SPLMN members to death sentences (Moniem Rahama and others) and also the trials of prisoners of war ( Hamid Tutu and Ibrahim Elmaz.) Yasir added that the Ibrahim Almaz case has more than one facet as he is a Northerner as well as a Southerner who joined JEM before the secession of the South.  Arman called upon and encouraged all eligible Northerners and Southerners, who desire, to keep their citizenship in both States because that will positively serve the future of the North and South Sudan.
Arman also stressed that the cold blooded assassinations of Awadia Ajbna and Abdelhakam Musa will not pass without punishment.  He also pointed to the continuous detention of the SPLMN members and their friends like Khalid Daraja from Western Darfur, Mrs. Jaleela Musa and Dr. Gamar Hussein.  This is in addition to the disappearance of more than 400 of the SPLMN members. These cases deserve the widest campaign of solidarity.  At the same time, Arman sincerely thanked Sudanese lawyers and those concerned with human rights issues inside or outside of Sudan and the free press who stood firm against these human rights violations as the ongoing violations against journalists, the press and opinion writers deserve our stand and solidarity with them.
Arman concluded by saying that the attacks on civilians in Kibkabya, old Half, Khartoum, Blue Nile and South Kordofan and Nuba Mountains cannot be rewarded by organizing an economic conference in Istanbul to support the war criminals or by keeping silent in front of atrocities.  Arman added that we unite our efforts of peaceful and armed struggles to create a national platform to defend human rights and bring down regime and establish democracy.
President Obama, Why Are You Waiting?
Recently members of Congress, Sudan activists and celebrities like George Clooney have sounded the alarm about the 400,000 civilians in Sudan’s regions of South Kordofan and Blue Nile that are starving to death at the hands of their own government. The Obama administration has noted that lack of food has reach “emergency” levels, one step below “catastrophe,” but has still not acted to provide relief and protection to these endangered people.
With the rainy season looming, making the region inaccessible, innocent Sudanese civilians can’t wait any longer. The Obama Administration must lead and take action, unilaterally if needed, to save lives immediately. Time has run out for relying simply on dialogue and negotiations with Omar al Bashir’s genocidal regime in Sudan that, for decades, has killed while it talks.
Act for Sudan now by sending an email to top Obama Administration officials in charge of Sudan policy.
Thank you for taking action!

by Tom Rhodes Apr 6, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

 
The world’s newest country still practices a shameful old tradition. Now a new movement aims to stop it.
  • Atia Odongi was 8 years old when her family gave her away. A crime had been committed in her town of Torit in South Sudan—Atia was selected to pay the price.

Atia Odongi
Atia Odongi was handed over to another family when she was 8 years old., Photo by Tom Rhodes

Atia’s brother had killed a man over a cattle dispute, so Atia was handed over to the man’s family as compensation. It’s a traditional practice in communities across her state of Eastern Equatoria in South Sudan, the country that became independent from Sudan in July 2011, after decades of civil war. For girls like Atia, their life becomes one of servitude and abuse, as the new families often harbor bitterness, taking revenge upon the girls they are given.

When Atia turned 9 years old, she was married to a son in her new family. When that man died of an illness, she was passed on to a younger brother. She spent her days scrubbing and cleaning—and being raped repeatedly by her new husband and other men in the family, with the intention of producing a child to replace the murdered family member. She was beaten if she fought back.

“I tried to kill myself twice,” says Atia, now 14 and still living in servitude.

Cattle are the economic mainstay for most communities in Eastern Equatoria; a young man cannot marry and build a homestead without them. A man must have at least 20 cows, costing 1,000 South Sudanese Pounds each (roughly $335), to win a woman’s hand in marriage. Desperate grooms end up conducting cattle raids to acquire sufficient numbers.

“Wherever there are high bride prices, there are cattle raids and violence. Girls end up paying the final price for it,” says Godfrey Victor Bulla, a local law student and journalist who runs an organization called Right to Information and Free Expression, which opposes the tradition. His organization conducted a survey of counties across the state, finding that the tradition of giving away girls was practiced in seven out of eight counties.

“Some of these areas in Eastern Equatoria are so isolated, they have continued the tradition for generations without anyone ever questioning it,” he says.

Following 22 years of civil war, many areas of South Sudan remain severely underdeveloped. According to South Sudan’s statistics bureau, only 19 percent of the population over the age of 15 is literate in Eastern Equatoria.

Amos Gudo, an elder chief who presides over a traditional court in an Eastern Equatoria village called Kiyala, says the practice of giving away girls must continue, as a way of solving conflicts between community members. He notes an absence of prisons in the state, inducing communities to keep relying on this tradition to resolve disputes.

Not all elders agree. A woman named Alima Biaka is devastated that her 16-year-old granddaughter, Igitu Imuta, was recently forced into marriage as compensation for a so-called blood feud. An uncle of Igitu’s had killed a man in a fight, promising the bereaved family his niece. Bewildered and frightened in her new family, Igitu has since vowed to take her own life, her grandmother said.

Now, that grandmother has decided to fight back. She has started campaigning with the local government and nongovernmental organizations, demanding her granddaughter’s release. “She is the only daughter I have left in this world, and I am not going to lose her,” she said.

Others within the Eastern Equatoria community support her. Lucy Iliha is the head of a state organization called the Women Civil Society Network. Along with Godfrey Victor Bulla, she is actively campaigning to stop the traditional practice, working with government officials and traditional leaders. Last month, she organized a demonstration with women’s groups across the state, calling on the state assembly to draft a law to forbid the practice.

It is an uphill battle, as some influential members of society continue the practice. In 2009, the state’s deputy governor gave one of his own family members to another family. Still, the activists are dedicated. “I promised myself to change this cycle of life,” said Victor Bulla. “One day we shall hopefully never have to recount the tragic stories of Atia and Igitu. Instead we will be discussing their marks at school.”

To get involved, contact Godfrey Victor Bulla at alkalinevictor@yahoo.co.uk


South Sudan
, Ethiopia sign security, development cooperation accord

Sudan Tribune
By Tesfa-Alem Tekle April 4, 2012 (ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopia and South Sudan have agreed to undertake a range of joint activities along their shared border. Representatives from Ethiopia’s Gambella and South Ethiopia Nation Nationalities and Peoples 
South Sudan says it pulls back troops from border area after flare-up with Sudan
Washington Post
JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan said Wednesday it has pulled out its troops from a contested area along the border with Sudan shortly after clashes between the two countries’ armies sparked fears of a return to war. Military spokesman Col.
Many South Sudanese unable to return home
Washington Post
WAU, South Sudan — Teresa Adut Akol’s new home is a small patch of concrete floor in a railway station outside this town. She shares the space with her eight children and stacks of their belongings, surrounded by dozens of other families whose return 

In South Sudan, Girls Are Given Away to Settle Family Feuds
Daily Beast
A crime had been committed in her town of Torit in South Sudan—Atia was selected to pay the price. Atia’s brother had killed a man over a cattle dispute, so Atia was handed over to the man’s family as compensation. It’s a traditional practice in 

South Sudan granted IPU membership
Africa Review
South Sudan has become the latest member of IPU. GEOFFREY SSERUYANGE | DAILY MONITOR | South Sudan Thursday became the 162nd member of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) after a resolution to have it admitted was unanimously supported by the delegates 
South Sudan: Sudan tried to build “illegal” oil pipeline
Independent Online
By Reuters South Sudan accused Sudan of trying to build an “illegal” 25-km oil pipeline crossing the border towards the South’s oil fields, a day after talks to resolve a damaging oil dispute between the two sides were postponed.

South Sudan: MSF Closing Kala Azar Emergency Project in South Sudan
Doctors Without Borders
After helping to successfully fight the largest outbreak of the deadly disease kala azar in South Sudan in years, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has handed over its project in Malakal, Upper Nile State, to local health 

“Giving an apology is the best way of bringing in peace. We don’t want to pass these painful things to our children. We want them to be living in a peaceful and democratic state in South Sudan…So those of us who have survived and who [have] seen painful things during the war, we need to kick off the process of national reconciliation,” said Dr. Machar in Bor on Tuesday (April 3rd, 2012) during a peace workshop held to reconcile the warring ethnic groups in Jonglei state, as quoted by Sudan Tribune.

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By PaanLuel Wël, Washington DC, USA, Planet Earth.

In the politically correct circles of the academic-left of the Western World, there is an understanding, called it a theory or an argument, that goes like this: some foreign cultural practices and beliefs—the caste system in India, killing of twins and albinos in some parts of Africa, witchcraft, polygamy and wife inheritance in Africa and the Islamic world and so forth—are obnoxious, despicable and barbarous. But because these are highly controversial subjects that may, and do indeed, insult those local people, it is better—politically correct—that the West should not talk about—condemn and eradicate—those cultural practices. Rather, it should be left upon the “enlightened” foreigners—the Indians, Africans, Arabs etc—to censure and exterminate their barbaric traditional customs and norms that are, or so they say, virtually anachronistic to the civilized world of the 21st century.

When appropriately and timely applied though, Political Correctness—the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult certain groups of people—can be an effective tool to broach, and perhaps solve, such sensitive issues as the Bor Massacre of 1991. To cut the long story short, none of the members of other South Sudanese communities—not even other sections of the Dinka society—would be prepared to come forward and urge the Bor Dinka Community to accept Dr. Machar’s apology and make peace with him for the fear that they may offend/insult Bor Dinka community—the victims of the 1991 Bor massacre.

Thus, I believe it is upon members of the Bor Dinka community, like myself, to break the silence over the taboo that Dr. Riek Machar, who masterminded the killing of unarmed, innocent civilians of the Greater Bor region, does not deserve to be forgiven, no matter how many apologies he is prepared to offer. To some, dare I say most, aggrieved members of the Bor Dinka community, it hardly makes any difference if and when those apologies are offered in Juba, Bortown, in each of the three counties of the Greater Bor region or even in each of the villages that constitute the Greater Bor community. To such a group of Bor Dinka members, an unequivocal acceptance of Dr. Machar’s apology and the prospect of a genuine reconciliation with him tantamount to the ultimate betrayal of their dead mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, relatives and colleagues killed by armed forces commanded by the very man they are making peace with.

But for how long will the Bor Dinka community gonna hold bitter grudge against a man who has come out—against all odds and intense pressure from tribal bigots within his Nuer community—to unconditionally accept his not-so-admirable past, offer unreserved apology and called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would open a window of opportunity for the young Republic of South Sudan to come to term with its long troubled past? For how long will the two communities—the Dinkas and the Nuers—be continually defined by an ugly past that none of them had any overall control over? For how long will the Dinkas and the Nuers will the entire country hostage to their tribal enmity? When will the two communities understand that any war—any conflict—between themselves is an all-out war among South Sudanese and any reconciliation and peace between them is the definitive peace for the whole country? Arguably, because of their size and political influence, a war between the Dinkas and the Nuers will always be a war against South Sudan itself while peace and reconciliation between the two will invariably result in long lasting peace and social prosperity for the whole country.

If Dr. Machar—who has unrivaled influence among the Nuer community—has wholeheartedly decided to make peace with his past by apologizing to the victims of his political adventures, isn’t it a high time that the Bor Dinka community welcomes his earnest apology and accept his peaceful overtures for the sake of the young—but already troubled—republic of South Sudan? I believe it is!

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When Dr. Machar offered his first public apology to the Bor Dinka Community on August 10, 2011, it was meant as an acknowledgement of his responsibility for the 1991 Bor Massacre—killing and mass displacement of the Bor Dinka civilians—following his defection on 28 August 1991 from the SPLM/A under the leadership of the late Dr. John Garang. The fact that the apology was given in a gathering organized and attended by senior leaders of the Bor Dinka community—including Rebecca Nyanding, the widow of Dr. John Garang that Dr. Machar rebelled against and fought a bitter war with—speak volume to the resolve and determination on the part of Dr. Machar to chart a new bright future for himself as a political leader and for South Sudan as a conflict-ridden nation.

Although Dr. Machar was categorical that his apology was solely aimed at bringing about some kind of a final closure on the dark past of the war era and, hopefully, to engender unity and harmonious relationship between the Dinkas and the Nuers, the apology was, unsurprisingly, received with mixed feelings from both quarters. On the one hand, some members of the Bor Dinka community such as the elders, Rebecca Nyandeng and Malaak Ayuen who were present during the gathering did “expressed their forgiveness to the vice president” and “commended [him] for accepting responsibility for the [Bor] incident.”  To them, the apology was the beginning of a long reconciliation process to come. In their reaction to the apology, the Bor Dinka Students from Uganda described Dr. Machar’s apology as the “beginning of a new era.” On the other hand, some members of the Bor Dinka community thought that the apology was not enough—chiefly because it was delivered in a small house in the distant land of Juba instead of in public gathering in the land of the victims.

The ethnic Nuer community among whom the Vice President hailed from did expressed mixed reactions too. While some welcomed Dr. Machar apology as a long overdue positive initiative to bring together the two estranged communities, others did worry that the Bor Dinka community would use the apology as “evidence of a crime” to arraign him before the ICC court for the 1991 Bor Massacre. Still, some members of the Nuer community like Deng Gatluak thought that the apology was premature:

“I don’t believe Riek Machar apologized just like that to the Dinka Bor community. If it is true and aimed to reconcile with the Bor community, then that reconciliation should have been a two-way process. Who among the Dinka Bor’s top leaders apologized on behalf of late Garang for the killing of Jikany Nuer unarmed civilians in 1985?” [Sudan Tribune, August 10, 2011].

Others though saw the bigger picture, especially given the fact that Dr. Machar, the current vice president of South Sudan, may aspire to the highest office in the future and may not wish to embark on that political quest with a lot of baggage. According to one Lul Gatkuoth Nguth from Canada, Dr. Machar’s apology was nothing less than a “politically astute move, to bring peace and harmony to the [two] communities:”

“In my opinion, it is not a shame that Riek Machar Teny apologized to Dinka Bor community. This is how the politics work. If you go through peace and conciliation process, this term ’apology’ has to apply if you are a real good politician who has a big mind” [Sudan Tribune, August 10, 2011].

It was within, or because of, these not-so-clear reactions from the two disgruntled communities that I responded to Dr. Machar apology with an article “Dr. Machar’s Apology to the Dinka Bor Community: A Tradeoff between long lasting Peace and Social Justice.” In that article written on August 13, 2011, I argued that the Bor Dinka community must trade off deserved social justice for the victims of the Bor Massacre for a long lasting peace and societal harmony in the new republic of South Sudan. My argument was in formed by the recognition that Dr. Machar, the perpetrator of the alleged mayhems, has freely and willingly initiated the peace and reconciliation process and the Bor Dinka community must therefore meet him half-way and strike a compromise for the sake of the country.

The Israelis, in their conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, have a policy referred to as “Land for Peace” in which Israelis are prepared to give up their Biblically land to the Arabs in exchange for peaceful co-existence with them. My contention, therefore, was that the Bor Dinka community should also embrace the policy of “Peace for Justice” instead of the traditional policy of retributive justice—Justice for Peace in which a true peace must be accompanied by a severe punishment for the perpetrator of the crimes. If South Sudanese have made peace—yes, CPA—with President Al-Bashir of Sudan who murdered millions of South Sudanese, how could they not forgive their own son who have volunteered to have his apology accepted and be forgiven for the sins committed by his armed forces?

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As I have previously mentioned, one key objection raised by various members of the Bor Dinka community against Dr. Machar’s first apology was that it was delivered in Juba instead of Bortown, and in small house, instead of in a public gathering where most members of the affected community would be present to witness and receive the apology from Dr. Machar. Well, it now appears that that complains from the Bor Dinka was not entirely lost on Guandit Machar. On Tuesday this week, April 3rd 2012, Dr. Machar offered his reaffirmation of the apology to the Bor Dinka community he had last year delivered in Juba. It was publicly delivered in Bortown where the massacre occurred and among those, whose family members were killed, maimed or displaced.

Will that be the end of the story? No, it is not. Not for Dr. Machar himself for he is calling for a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission and not for the Bor Dinka either for they still find issues with the apology itself.

For example, some members of the Bor Dinka community see the apology as a “window dressing” process, delivered in meetings and public gatherings not meant for the discussion of the 1991 atrocities. The allegation is that the first apology was delivered in a gathering meant to mark the anniversary of the death of Dr. John Garang in Rebecca Nyandeng’s home in Juba, while the second apology was given in Bor on an occasion designated to stop the ongoing inter-ethnic strife in Jonglei. Though the two incidences in Bor are related, in that both concern conflict resolution and peace building mechanisms, some members of the Bor Dinka Community do feel that holding his apology on that occasion tends to generalize and hence belittled the magnitude of the Bor Massacre—something they feel should be given its own special day and occasion to discuss it.

Taking advantage of anonymity provided by online websites, some comments on Dr. Machar’s second apology are even harsher. Typical of most tribal bigots in all South Sudanese communities, one commentator from the online, France-based Sudan Tribune went even further in his vehement rejection of Dr. Machar’s second apology in Bor:

“Groups of people who just forgive easily are undoubtedly corrupt; forgiveness is the brother of destruction. Anybody who forgives is encouraging crime on his capacity. No apology is accepted from Dr. Riek Machar and he can go to court with what he did of murdering children, women, and elderly people not only in Bor but even in some part of Nuerland.”

The same antagonistic line of argument was echoed in these words from another online commentator:

“He can make apologies as much as he wishes, but we are not going to buy his craps. His thirst for power forced him to apologize at the wrong time. He will not hold his antelope horn spoon as a president of South Sudan. People who will vote for him are his blind Nuer followers. They know no truth or are denying the facts about the destructions he caused to civilians.”

Moreover, Some within the Bor Dinka Community maintain that the 1991 failed coup against the leadership of Dr. John Garang of the SPLM/A that resulted in the Bor Massacre and the mass displacement of the Bor civilians did not just affected the Bor community but also all the communities of South Sudan. This avowal is well captured below by Peter Nhiany on South Sudanese Bloggers’ blog. Because the comment can best be understood and appreciated in its entirety, I am going to quote the whole statement as it appears on the blog:

“I have a big problem with the repetition of this apology thing from Mr. Vice President. Do I want him forgiven? An answer to this question is obvious but Mr. Vice President just does not get it right. Does he understand that the human catastrophe he caused in Jonglei State didn’t occur neither in Juba nor in Bor town alone. This was a sweeping tragedy across Jonglei from Nyarweng to Anyidi in Bor South. Apologizing while in Juba does not constitutes legitimate apology; apologizing in Bor town does not constitute it either. Do not get me wrong; I’m not rejecting an apology from our Vice President. There is a missing piece that Mr. Vice President overlooks every single time he repeatedly apologizes for his human destruction he committed in 1991. Mr. Vice President forgets that those heroic SPLA soldiers who fought against his vicious army in those months in 1991 were not only from Bor or Jonglei State. They came from all walks of lives from South Sudan communities. I mean from all tribes of South Sudan. When he apologizes, he needs not to forget that he caused harm to other tribes in South Sudan as well and that he should not forget. Kiir Mayardit knows it very well. The 1991 war between SPLA and SSIM did not only killed Bor civillians and Bor citizens who were soldiers, but soldiers from all tribes from South Sudan. I want Mr. Vice President to come clean by not apologizing to one part and leave another out. I love peace and I want our new nation to live in peace for the rest of the generations. Dr. Teny needs not only to apologize to Bor or Jonglei people but to the whole of South Sudan. Whether his intention was to bring victory to the South Sudanese over NIF/NCP, he did it in a wrong way; a way that took away the lives of those who would be helping in developing our new nation now. I do welcome his apology, but he still has more to do in order for him to come clean. Mr. Vice President needs to look at a bigger picture instead. I’m sure we people from Bor are not in position to seek any revenge for what Dr. Teny did to us in 1991. We love peace and will continue to love peace regardless of how much we are hated by the enemies of Peace. I do thank all the soldiers who stood with our leaders to protect not only the people of Bor, but further escalation of the 1991 defection and divide within our party. I’m also sure that all people of Bor or Jonglei communities who were affected by the SSIM rebelling are at this time not seeking any punishment for Dr. Riek Machar-Teny. I hold no grudges against him, but if he wants to continue to be our leader, he really needs to re-strategies and develop new approach. May God bless RSS and South Sudanese.” [Peter Nhiany, April 4, 2012, South Sudanese Bloggers]

Peter Nhiany’s argument that the carnages of the 1991 split didn’t only affected the Bor Dinka community but the entire people of South Sudan is in place. It is true that Dinkas’ as well as Nuers’ civilians and soldiers were indiscriminately killed or maimed and so were other community members of South Sudanese society. But I also think that Dr Machar, as an individual and as a leader, has done enough of his part by leading from front instead of waiting to be pushed around or behind by others. He has initiated the process of national reconciliation and forgiveness. As members of the Bor Dinka community that was heavily affected by the 1991 split within the SPLM/A, we must give him a chance and hear him out before passing the next verdict on the man.

What remain to be done, as Dr. Machar has already proposed, is to organize and have a national conference of all South Sudanese people since all were affected as Mr. Nhiany has explicated, though to varying degree. We can borrow the very model used in South Africa after the demised of Apartheid, or in Rwanda after the genocide, to bring about national dialogue: South Sudan needs a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with such deep-rooted and emotional issues such as the Bor Massacre. I think that is what Dr. Machar was calling for in his reaffirmation of his apology in Bortown. Remember how people reacted to his first statement offered in Juba? He was told to go to Bortown and made an apology. Well, now he has gone to Bortown, humbling himself to do as members of Bor Dinka community advised him to.

In fact, a call to establish a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission has a lot of support from South Sudanese citizens. Steve Paterno, a South Sudanese political pundit residing in the USA who authored a biography of Father Saturlino Ohure—the spiritual father of South Sudanese liberation struggle, thinks that:

“The VP Riek Machar may be sincere in his apology, but his approach is naïve at best and haphazard at worst. In its recent convention, the SPLM National Liberation Council resolved among other things a need for a national reconciliation. Such undertaking must be institutionalized in a similar way with the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is in such a proceeding that we will, for example, know as to what is that Riek Machar did in his capacity that contributed into the Bor Massacre, plus other incidents he is accused of orchestrating.”

Another South Sudanese from the USA, Agereb Leek Chol, a Master Student at Clark University in Massachusetts, also lends his support to the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Sudan:

“On April 3, 2012, my Vice President extended his apology to civilians in Bor town to “confirm” his apology. I will welcome Dr. Riek Machar apology once and for all. The reason is not because he went to the grassroots, but if we want South Sudan and Jonglei State to be in peace as we pray and write about it, we then need to forgive ourselves. This doesn’t mean we forgot Dr. Riek Machar’s crimes during the civil war, but this is the only right way forward. If the Black South Africans reconciled with the Apartheid regime, Hutu and Tutsi in Rwandan, Dr. Garang de Mabior with Dr. Riek Machar in 2002, President Salva with Paulino Matip and Peter Gatdet, then we the civil society have to jump on the bandwagon too. Should Dr. Riek Machar extend his apology to the entire country because the Nasir Coup affected all tribes in the South, then we have to give him some credits because he has started the dialogue and reconciliation process. On a personal note, I ran at a gunpoint in Bor town in 1991 escaping Dr. Riek Machar’s merciless armed forces. South Sudan Oyee! And SPLA Oyeee!!”

It was the same melody from Ayuen Awan. Commenting on a link article on Dr. Machar’s second apology on my Facebook page, Mr. Awan wrote thus:

“A mere apology is not the way to go. Dr. Riek should be dragged to a Truth & Reconciliation Commission for public hearing. Those who were victimized by his brutality should also give their testimonies.”

I did welcome his first Juba apology and I wrote about it sometimes back. As someone from the Bor Dinka community in which the 1991 bloodsheds is still a matter of personal tragedy in every family and as someone who lost relatives in the process, I need not be told what it feel like to broach the subject. But the Bor Dinka community must remember that it was their own sons, lead by Dr. John Garang, who initiated and agreed to make peace with Dr. Machar. It was done lest the blood of the martyrs must have been shed in vain. The Nasir Coup of 1991 weakened the Movement to the point of self-annihilation. The Movememt had to make peace with Dr. Machar, and Dr. Machar had to make peace with the Movement, to ensure that the Movement is strong enough to confront the enemy and achieve its long-term goal of political liberation. And it was achieved, with combined forces of all South Sudanese whose hearts and souls were wedded to the Movement, for better or for worse, in death or life, and in defeat or victory!!

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Personally, I hold no grudge against Dr. Machar so long as he works—and he had been doing so since he rejoined the Movement in 2002—for the interest of all South Sudanese people. But if he had decided to offer an apology, I would accept it because it is human nature to apologize if one believes that they have unfairly or unintentionally wrong someone. Dr. Machar is under immense pressure from some diehard tribalists within his own community—yes, there are tribal chauvinists in every community—and the Bor Dinkas must appreciate his resolve to do and say what he is currently doing or saying. For the record, he is the only leader so far to own up to his sins in South Sudan and probably among very few across the African continent. The pride that comes with leadership, particularly in Africa where leaders can easily mobilized their tribes to defeat justice, make it simpler for the horse to pass through the eye of the needle than for the politician to own up to the crime he committed in broad daylight. Ask Kenyans about Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto and you would appreciate Dr. Machar’s overtures for peace in South Sudan.

No matter how much the agonies of the 1991 Bor Massacre may conspire to cloud our present judgment of the man, we the Bor Dinka community must see him not only as the “Riek Machar man col amook ci baai riook” of the past accused of masterminding the massacre of innocent unarmed civilians but also as the current vice president of South Sudan pleading to have his apologies accepted and calling for national reconciliation and healing. It is not a secret that the Bor Dinka Community prides itself as the most civilized, law-abiding, and peace-loving society in South Sudan. Whether or not that is a true reflection of who they are or just a mere self-aggrandizement does not matter; the challenge in front of the Bor Dinka community is whether they are prepared to make peace with the “enemy” who is publicly prepared and ready to make amend with them.

The Bor Dinka community have lost many leading sons—more than any other community relative to their size and the seniority of the victims—to the cause of South Sudan: Akuot Atem Mayen, Martin Majier Ghai, Arok Thon Arok and above all, Dr. John Garang himself. The victims of the 1991 Bor Massacre are more or less part of the costliest package paid to secure the independence of South Sudan. A peaceful and prosperous South Sudan—only attainable with harmonious co-existence of the Dinkas and the Nuers—is the highest gift that any member of the Bor Dinka community can ever bestow on the graves of their beloved lost ones and that all South Sudanese can ever dream to bequeath to their children and children’s children.

Before the Biblical Paul was Paul, he was Saul—a murderous madman targeting Christians in their dens. Who knows, the Saul who murdered the Bor Dinka people might one day be the Paul of the republic of South Sudan!! Like the Jews of Europe, the Bor Dinka community must forgive their tormentors but never forget the atrocities committed against them!!

PaanLuel Wël (paanluel2011@gmail.com) is the Managing Editor of PaanLuel Wël: South Sudanese Bloggers. He can be reached through his Facebook page, Twitter account or on the blog: https://paanluelwel2011.wordpress.com/