South Sudan: They Can Even Try to Kill Me, but I Won't Leave

Agok — Previously displaced by war and conflict, Chol Ramadan Seek, together with tens of thousands of Sudanese, returns to Abyei for a referendum that will decide if the contested border region should stay with Khartoum or join the now independent South Sudan.

Dancing and singing women line the muddy landing strip in the small town of Agok in South Sudan's Abyei region. As the plane comes in for landing, children start running along the narrow stretch of dirt. "Home, at last", says Chol Ramadan Seek, as the aircraft comes to wobbly halt. "I have suffered a lot to get here. At one point I almost thought I wasn't going to make it. I returned to Abyei to exercise my right to vote and to see my family, or what is left of it, " Ramadan says, while trying to spot his uncle in the crowd that has gathered to welcome the returnees.

In September this year, the South Sudanese government started airlifting South Sudanese returnees from North Sudan into the contested border region. So far more than 6,000 people have returned to participate in a referendum that will allow the population of Abyei to decide whether the regions should stay a specially administered zone within Sudan, or join the independent state of South Sudan. "When I heard the authorities were flying people to Abyei, I immediately asked my boss for an early holiday. A week later I boarded a flight to Agok," says Ramadan.

Independence

Ramadan has not seen his family since he left Abyei in 2008, after clashes had erupted between the Sudanese army and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

"After the 2005 peace agreement that ended the civil war, we were all waiting for the referendum," Ramadan says. "Instead the fighting resumed. Antonov planes flew in over our heads. The UN set up camps for the displaced. We went to stay with my uncle thinking that the fighting would stop, but the forces from Khartoum kept coming back. I still remember the many injured and the tens of thousands fleeing."

Ramadan went to South Sudanese capital Juba to continue his studies in computer science. "Juba at that time was a mess," he says. "I decided to transfer to the University of Khartoum and come back when things had settled down." In 2011 Abyei was meant to vote on whether to be part of Sudan or South Sudan on the same day as Juba voted overwhelmingly to split from the north. But the referendum never took place.