The UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) wishes to refute an opinion column appearing in the 30 June and 1 July editions of The Citizen newspaper alleging that armed opposition forces have been firing this week on internally displaced persons (IDPs) staying at the Mission’s protection-of-civilians (PoC) site in Malakal.
There is absolutely no truth to the claims of the columnist William Sunday D Tor that opposition forces loyal to the former vice president Riek Machar and the former Sudan People’s Liberation Army general Johnson Olony have been “shooting at the civilians discriminately in UNMISS camp” who are from “other ethnic groups.”
UNMISS peacekeepers have strengthened security measures in and around the Malakal PoC site in the wake of heavy fighting that occurred in the Upper Nile state capital last weekend. These measures belie the Citizen columnist’s unsubstantiated assertion that IDPs at the Malakal have been left to the mercy of opposition forces because “nothing is done by UNMISS police.”
The Citizen columnist never attempted to contact the Mission to obtain its comment about these baseless rumours. UNMISS calls upon all media outlets to refrain from disseminating such disinformation that maliciously seeks to polarize South Sudanese society along ethnic lines.