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South Sudan Crisis deepens: Labour minister defects, joins rebels

Published

10 years ago

February 17, 2017

The determination of the people of the Republic of South Sudan to enjoy peace has been further threatened as the minister of labour in the current administration joined a rebel group.

Lieutenant General Gabriel Duop Lam was said to have sent a one-page letter saying he would join the rebellion of former Vice President Riek Machar.

National Daily learnt that the defection of the South Sudanese minister was the second high-level resignation this week from the government side locked in a civil war which has displaced more than three million Sudanese.

Reuters on Friday quoted Lam to have said that “I reaffirm my full allegiance and commitment to the wise leadership of His Excellency Dr. Riek Machar.”

The government spokesman, Michael Makuei Lueth, has confirmed in Juba on Friday, of Lam’s defection.

After gaining political hegemony from the old Sudan, the oil-rich South Sudan, was plunged into civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired Machar, his deputy and an ethnic Nuer.

Fighting in South Sudan has been pitched on ethnic lines, which has made the United Nations in December 2016 to warn that the country might gravitate into genocide.

It would be understood that Lieutenant General Thomas Cirillo Swaka, a well-respected deputy head of logistics, resigned from the military six days ago without a categorical statement that he was joining the rebels.