By Atok Dan Baguoot
Dear Gen Athor Deng,
It was exactly on the 19th December at 10:a.m. local time in Juba that your news of being besieged at Morobo county in Central Equatoria state hit the market. Few minutes later, you were pronounced dead in a gun battle that involved SPLA soldiers. You had died as a villain according to your assassins but on the other hand you were a hero when one revisits stories of struggle.
Your death took Juba and the entire South Sudan a surprise because upright mental persons could not come to term with reality that you had come to graduate sections of your army in military training near at this end point. On that day when the Vice President, Dr. Riek Machar Teny, flanked by the SPLA Spokesperson, Philip Aguer Panyang went to media to declare the news, the next thing one asked was the number of casualties involved in both sides of the battle. It happened that it was a wishful battle that nobody died apart from you and your personal aid.
Though that statement contradicted the reality of the termed “besieged” used by the SPLA spokesperson Philip Aguer before the finally announcement. Nobody was bold enough to question it. Of course Dr. Machar said you were killed on Monday while Panyang said you died on Tuesday, a fact that contradicts the truth surrounding your death. The right persons who knew when you died were your own God and those triggered the bullets that sent you to heaven or hell. It has gone month now since we were relieved of your burdens.
In this account, you had ascended to the highest rank in the SPLA through personal contributions during the struggle. 2005 when peace agreement was signed wasn’t a long one for your assassins to have forgotten what you had brought to the people of this country. You didn’t go and come back for confirmation like what others had done, nor did you even gone to rest after combined enemy had lodged seven round of bullets into your flesh. Your ascension to highest rank was gradual based on achievements counted.
In fact, we were relieved from your burdens when you died with simple reason that all the deaths including those who died of malaria were attributed to your rebellion. The government could say ambulance would have gone to pick up a patient in the village if Athor had not way laid ambush. Crops would have yielded well if Athor had not stirred up violent even in Raga leave alone Jonglei and Warrap where perennial hunger has erected tents.
Your children would never live to celebrate when you departed the world except your birth day which I also doubt if you had birth certificate to show such a record. Your death had discolored our Christmas and new year happiness. To those whom you had killed their loved ones, it was a joyous moment and justice was seen done. Those who had known and have not forgotten your valor in the struggle, it was a day of regrets. All in all, we would have loved to see justice done if you were brought to competent court of law to answer on all charges levied on you and to tell us why you rebelled more so to those who were aggrieved by your action. They had wished to see you being handcuffed and drag to court and made publicly so that others who held the same sentiment of rebelling against government can see and that complaining in South Sudan when rigged off in elections warrants death if the aggrieved nag.
Inasmuch as this, the only culprit condoning impunity is the government that robs Peter to pay Paul and felt justice done. If the government can rob somebody from his victory and liaises in partnership with robber, then it becomes tale in the Manor Farm which later became “Animal Farm” after which all animals struggled for freedom and later turned to be “All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”. After South Sudan obtained freedom, some became more equals, so the least equals must learn that.
In regard to this, the only station in life in which you were wronged was the time when Gen Kuol Manyang Juuk lifted you on his huge shoulder after you succeeded to disrupt and dislodge the assembly of Nassir group and their affiliates in Panyagor in 1994. Night preceding that you were in Poktap, a distant of more than 12 hours walk. Dr. John Garang De Mabior persuaded you saying “Athor from tomorrow if the meeting in Panyagor succeeded , that will mark the day the souls of all those South Sudanese who had perished to bring justice would be rendered in ruin and the Movement would then be no more”. You heeded on to that benevolent call from your leader and ordered all your soldiers at around 7:00.p.m. to start running together with you and by 4.00.a.m, you had arrived Panyagor , four hours before the commencement of the highly regarded meeting of true betrayers.
Somebody might want to learn who were those in that highly dramatized meeting. They were, Dr. Riek Machar, the leader of the Nassir, Dr. Lam Akol, Kuach Kang, Joseph Oduoh, Kerubino Kuanyin Bol, Arok Thon Arok, William Nyuon Bany, Gordon Koang Chol, Taban Deng Gai, Simon Kun Puoch, Elijah Hon Top, Riek Gai Kok, James Kok Rue, and many others that you know. Section of this government was for that meeting. It was highly funded by the West and those who were against the leadership of Dr. John Garang De Mabior.
Gen Athor, despite that selfless contributions, it says in English that be fair. “when am right thousands times, nobody remembers, but when am wrong only a time, nobody forget”. Gen Athor you are true victim of this fallacy.
In this case, what matters most is not where you died like many people do say you killed in Kampala and carried to Morobo, it is the fact that you died. As now you might have already met with people that had departed earlier. Dr. John Garang is one of those whom you might have shook hands with. I think he will ask you to do one thing because he was your boss. In religious aspect, death is not misfortune nor it an accident or even a punishment. It is the end of life on this part of the universe.
Gen Athor, it is good that you have gone to that covetously place. It is the only place you are either judged wrongly of rightly because God counts on your deeds both known and unknown to human kind while still alive. He is a fair God. He is immune against all human nonsense. Lodge your complaints there and wait for Kuol Manyang who cheated you in elections in the name of SPLM as if SPLM and him were destined to rule by God.
The worse after you left, the same government is still blackmailing scapegoat that you manufactured crisis in Jonglei and that whatever reason of conflict is you. That alone will tell a sound minded person that something was fishy and that the vehicle of struggle might have truly veered off the road. This is solely judged by comrades versus comrades like exactly in the tale of animals in Animals Farm after they had successfully sung the “Beasts of England”. The alive government officials are saying that guns used in tribal conflicts in Jonglei were brought by you. They don’t even mention anything on the guns companies.
