DAKAR – A hundred unarmed South Sudanese refugees in eastern Congo took 13 United Nations mission staff hostage today, demanding to be moved to a third country, a UN official based in the area said.
They were among 530 people who have been living in the Munigi base, outside Goma, since fleeing South Sudan last August, UN Goma bureau head Daniel Ruiz said.
Most are former fighters loyal to former vice president Riek Machar, who have clashed with President Salva Kiir’s forces since July 2016.
The UN estimates about three million South Sudanese have been uprooted by the violence in their country, the biggest cross-border exodus in Africa since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Ruiz said the camp occupants had been demanding to be moved to a third country for months, but no one would take them.
Congo’s government, mindful of threats to its stability from past refugee influxes, and from the armed groups that frequently roam its lawless east, is also keen to move them.
On Friday, eight of them agreed to be repatriated to South Sudan’s capital Juba. Others fear going back and are frustrated at being confined in the tiny camp in eastern Congo.
“They’re saying if the eight were transferred to South Sudan, why shouldn’t we be able to go to a third country?” Ruiz said. He added that the UN mission was currently negotiating with them.
Civil war broke out in oil-producing South Sudan in 2013, after Kiir sacked Machar from the vice presidency.
That conflict ended in a peace pact in 2015 and Machar was reinstated early last year, but tensions between the two men lingered and finally erupted into new fighting in July. (Reuters)
