Dr. Ding Chol Dau was brutally murdered, not death by suicide, says his father

My Dear South Sudanese,

Dr. Ding Col Dau Ding with Dr. John Garang in the UK

November 26, 2015 (SSB)  —  My family and myself can hardly find words befitting your sympathetic and compassionate response to our despair on the untimely death of our Son, Dr. Ding Col Dau Ding, on the night of the 27th October 2015.

Ding was a highly competent medical doctor and an exceptional scientist. He loved clinical medicine and he had a maxim of using his medical knowledge to make his patients happy and healthy. In fact, we have not come across any of his patients complaining of poor treatment under his care. Just imagine; when no volunteer was available to give blood to a very sick young patient, Ding volunteered and gave one unit of his own blood to his patient. This is medical over-sympathy and humanity at its very highest!!!!

Our love for Ding is immeasurable. We have buried Ding in the grounds of our new home in Juba. Ding’s spirit will forever still give us an aura of his ongoing closeness and nearness to us.

The South Sudanese Police authorities have now officially stated to us, and are now formally reporting, that Ding’s death was murder and an investigation is now ongoing with international assistance and support. Aside from being South Sudanese, Ding was born in England as a British Citizen.

Unless the perpetrators and facilitators (both foreign and national) are weeded-out and are identified, some of which are within our institutions (the very same institutions meant to provide our people with security), then these targeted killings which are too grave and irreversible will continue. We have entered an undeniable era of unbounded and uncontrollable death and violence in South Sudan that has only gotten worse. We South Sudanese are all now much closer to death within our own country than we are to life.

We, as a family, had already suspected foul-play from the first moment we first heard the devastating news about Ding’s death. We chose to keep our thoughts to ourselves in order to ensure that Ding’s funeral rites and burial were conducted without any politicising or distractions in light of the immeasurable grief and sorrow we felt.

We were also as equally concerned with potential acts of vengeance and retaliation being immediately undertaken against any of the alleged suspects or individuals, and we did not want any further blood spilt in Ding’s name. Now that Ding’s body has been laid to rest, we are fully focused on finding out the truth surrounding our Son Ding’s death.

The Late Ding was staying in our three-bedroom flat in Juba Town at the time of his death. It is directly opposite to the Headquarters of the Central Bank of South Sudan and next to Ivory Bank. This is a location amassed with banks, forex bureaus, police-persons and other heavily-armed security personnel; aside from our very own personal police guards residing at our residence. Unfortunately, no other members of our family were at home with Ding that fateful night of his death. We had all flown back to England two weeks earlier for the spinal surgery of my wife and his mother, Mrs. Zeinab Bilal Lual Ayen.

Ding’s daily routine in Juba was very simple and it involved going to his Healthcare Facility in Kololo (Airport Road Diagnostic Centre) and then back home to the flat in the evenings. He went to the clinic in the mornings, if required by way of an emergency or appointment, but commonly he would report to work in the late afternoon to work till the late evening before returning back home at 10pm or 11pm at night, after having dropped off the clinic staff safely back at their homes.

Sadly, Ding appears to have met his fate between 10.30pm and 11.00pm on the night of the 27th October 2015 once he had returned to an assumed empty and secured flat. A group of assailants (not less than two in number, from the details now emerging from the Police’s ongoing investigation and forensic reports) were in-waiting within the flat. The attackers swooped upon Ding with a heavy blunt instrument and hit him on the top right-rear side of his head knocking him down to the ground.

This, we assume, dazed Ding and he fell down heavily onto his knees leading to the breaking of a couple of floor tiles in the main reception area as you walk into the flat. These broken floor tiles are still very plainly evident in the flat. The attackers then lifted and carried Ding to his bedroom (the assailants clearly knew the intricacies of his routine both inside and outside the flat) and then brutally executed Ding by shooting him fatally in the back of his neck penetrating the great blood vessels (Carotid and Jugular) on the left rear-side of his neck with the bullet ultimately exiting via his oral-cavity (mouth) causing traumatic injury to the suspensory anatomy of the tongue and breakage of several of his front teeth along its trajectory.

The fatal bullet’s point-of-exit caused much beveling with more tissue damage at the front compared with its point-of-entry at the back of Ding’s neck. This is the pathological norm with most gunshot injuries and further indicates that the fatal gunshot was not an accident nor was it suicide. Additionally, Ding’s blood was only found pooled in one contained location directly adjacent to his head and nowhere else within the room or within the flat (i.e. His blood was only found directly next to his head with no evidence of blood anywhere else in the room; again something inconsistent with an un-contained or uncontrolled sudden gunshot injury to the head or neck).

A bullet was found within the bedroom that Ding’s body was found in but it is not the fatal bullet that killed Ding as it had no evidence of any blood on it. This bullet was found shot through one of the doors of the wardrobe within Ding’s bedroom and it eventually nestled on top of his clothing laid down in the wardrobe. Again, there was no blood on Ding’s clothing from this bullet. Furthermore, there was no blood on the bed sheets, furniture or walls in the bedroom which is completely inconsistent with the earlier disseminated public and social media narratives of “Death by Suicide” or “Accidental Fatal Gunshot Death”.

Ding’s body was also very carefully placed and laid down between the two beds that occupy his bedroom in such an orderly manner that further indicates that there was third-party involvement in the movement of his body and therefore in his death. Finally, some personal possessions, including money which Ding took from the clinic that evening, are missing when his body was found in the flat.

Ding’s targeted killing and execution is a seminal turning point for many reasons:

1. It happened under the hands of several assailants who knew his daily and nightly movements very well.

2. It happened within his own bedroom, within his own and assumed-to-be-safe-and-secure home.

3. It happened under the noses of at least two armed policemen which were assumed to be guarding over him and the property.

4. It happened within the middle of probably the only other equally secure and well-armed location in the whole of Juba at night, i.e. directly opposite to the Central Bank of South Sudan Headquarters, with the Presidential Residence near J-1 being the other secure location.

We have to all take a very long, hard and real-close look at ourselves as South Sudanese citizens, and our concept of national patronage and its concomitant “right-to-safe-and-secure-

life” for all of its citizens above all others. We have some very serious and grave problems that appear to now be irreversible in nature and are getting much worse. Not even God or prayer will be able to save us from them nor the inevitable fate of death spreading across our country. A big storm is brewing upon the horizon and all South Sudanese are already being lined-up as the sacrificial lambs to the slaughter.

If criminals and bandits (both indigenous and foreign) have now become so free and comfortable to operate with impunity within our new Sovereign nation; and these same criminals and bandits appear to be closely affiliated and complicit with some South Sudanese whose primary job it is to protect the loyal, hard-working patriotic South Sudanese citizens within their country, then we are now living in hell and true Armageddon is upon us.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on which side of the table you sit on (i.e. those who want this brutal madness to stop versus those that want it to continue), I have a very strong feeling (just as my Late Son Ding did) that the vast majority of South Sudanese will not give-up on their hard-fought country and their dignity to once again become second-class citizens without a fight. It will not be long now before all South Sudanese once again see and know who their true common enemy once again is.

This “wolf” that is now beating hard and freely upon our door, and whether knowingly or unknowingly is being perpetuated by our very own South Sudanese citizens, will soon discover that my Son Ding’s brutal murder will bring about widespread repercussions and consequences. It, and all the other painful loss of innocent lives suffered by each and every family across South Sudan over these many decades of death, will finally help us all as South Sudanese to regain our identity and its concomitant lost pride and dignity.

Please God, give us all once again the strength, courage and wisdom we need to seek definitive justice for my Son Ding, and for all the other self-sacrificing and selfless South Sudanese Sons and Daughters who have lost their lives within our bleeding Sovereign Nation.

God Bless you all.

Dr. Col Dau Ding, father of the deceased.