Collo genocide case must be taken to the International Court of Justice

By Akic Adwok Lwaldeng

The dictionary definition of “genocide” is simple. Just as “homicide” means killing a person and “patricide” means killing your father, so genocide means killing people such as in an ethnic or religious group. The examples that spring most readily to mind are the Holocaust and, perhaps, the mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994”.

But then again, The UN’s convention on genocide, which was drafted after the second world war, defines it remarkably broadly, in ways that are quite different from the popular understanding of the term. It is not only killing that counts, says the convention. So do “measures intended to prevent births”, if their aim is “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. So does “serious bodily or mental harm”, if inflicted with the same aim, or the forcible transfer of children to a different group.

The Collo genocide case will remain the longest-standing injustice in South Sudan's history. The perpetrators remain in rejection and NGOs and regimes as eyewitnesses have allowed the facts to be swept under the carpet and to turn the other way.

With the recent events in Fashoda and Panyakang counties it seems history has repeated itself. The Nuer Militia leader Dr. Reik and his wife Angelina, including Mr. Tut Kew, the security advisor to the regime, their Militia so-called White army, indiscriminately attacked all areas of the Collo Land and systemically committed heinous war crimes against the ethnic Collo population forcing almost 98% of them to flee for thier lives from Collo Land. Despite the peace agreement of 2018 , militias are still holding captive thousands of livestock, and civilians under inhumane conditions, we must ensure that the world properly acknowledges all genocides of the past and the present to strengthen and resolve to call them out and prevent them from being repeated in the future.