This is not just a story about South Sudan, it is a test of the world’s promise: “Never again.”
In December 2013, the government of South Sudan launched a systematic campaign of violence against its own citizens, targeting men, women, and children solely because they were Nuer. Thousands were hunted in their homes, executed at police stations, drowned in the Nile, or burned alive in churches turned into tombs. This was not collateral damage, it was not “tribal chaos,” it was state-orchestrated ethnic cleansing, and it meets the legal threshold of genocide under the 1948 UN Convention.
This paper is an act of witnessing. It draws on survivor testimonies, UN reports, human rights investigations, and international legal standards to establish what happened, who was responsible, and why the world looked away. It is analytical but not detached. It is legal but not cold. Because when children are buried in mass graves behind UN walls, neutrality becomes complicity.
I stood at that cemetery on the edge of Juba. Row after row of tiny graves—many unmarked, all unacknowledged by the state that ordered their killing. I heard mothers whisper names the world never recorded. I saw fathers clutch handfuls of red soil where their sons should have been.
That day, I made a promise: to speak where silence has reigned, and to name what power has tried to erase. This work is advocacy rooted in evidence. It does not rely on emotion alone, but it refuses to let legal technicalities bury moral truth. The violence against the Nuer was not an anomaly; it was policy. From the presidential guard to state radio to allied militias, as Lt. Gen Johnson stated, the machinery of extermination was activated with precision. And from Washington to Addis Ababa to Kampala, the response was not justice but appeasement.
The scope of this paper is deliberate: it focuses on the December 2013 massacres and their immediate aftermath because this was the moment when the South Sudanese state chose annihilation over reconciliation. The paper dissects this episode not to isolate it, but to expose a pattern of impunity that continues today.
Survivors have waited over a decade for someone in power to say: This was wrong. This was deliberate. This must never happen again.
This paper is written for them.
And it is written as a demand to governments, to courts, to churches, to every institution that claims to uphold human dignity: Recognize it. Name it. Stop denying it.
The Political Context (2005–2013)
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) divided the country along tribal lines, a strategy that led to ethnic cleansing and made the movement responsible for widespread atrocities. The revitalized peace agreement failed to address these deep-rooted divisions.
I visited Juba, the capital city of South Sudan, during a deeply painful moment. My visit coincided with the burial of a relative who had died inside a United Nations–protected camp on the outskirts of the city. The cemetery behind the UN camp was shocking. Although it stretched for nearly half a mile, a survey of the land revealed that there was no remaining space for new graves, even as we gathered for yet another funeral. What was most heartbreaking was the sheer number of graves belonging to children. As my relatives mourned their loved one, my own tears and emotional breakdown were intensified by the long, silent rows of children’s graves—almost all belonging to one ethnic community: The Nuer.
In moments of mourning, the Nuer community inside the UN camp comes together to conduct funeral services under the Presbyterian Church located within the camp. During this particular period, news emerged that the Roman Catholic leader, the Pope at the Vatican, intended to visit Juba. This announcement immediately sparked political tension between Rome and the regime in power. The Pope’s delegation was expected to be joined by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderators of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Holy See planned to conduct open Mass prayers at the UN-protected site.
This proposal sent shock-waves through the regime. In response, the government hastily brought forward a previously scheduled national program as a tactical maneuver to prevent Mass prayers from taking place inside the UN camp. Government officials contacted heads of churches and religious leaders across the country. Presbyterian members outside the UN camp—many believed to be aligned with the regime—were tasked with assuming leadership roles over churches within the UN compound to control religious activities. Tragically, junior priests who had served in the UN camp for many years began to realize that their church leaders had compromised their moral authority by aligning with a government responsible for the killing of their people.
The Nuer community remained under the protection of UN forces, shielding them from the South Sudanese government, which accused them of being rebels and sought to eliminate them. Amid growing tension between the suffering population and the ruling regime, the Pope eventually suspended his visit to Juba. This suspension brought a sense of relief to the government, as it avoided international exposure.
The President of South Sudan is a member of the Roman Catholic Church and occasionally attends Sunday Mass at one of Juba’s Catholic cathedrals. During the civil war, Christians worldwide strongly supported the Southern Sudan liberation struggle. In the United States, Evangelical Christians united as a powerful pressure group, advocating on behalf of persecuted Christians in South Sudan.
The Pope Invites President Kiir:
On Thursday, April 11, 2022, the Pope knelt and kissed the feet of South Sudan’s warring faction leaders, urging President Salva Kiir, his former deputy Riek Machar, and three vice presidents to restore peace and form a unity government (Reuters). During a tea reception at the Vatican, President Kiir was accompanied by his three vice presidents. An incident happened that shocked observers, a dog urinated on the foot of one of delegate—an event many interpreted as a grim symbol of the country’s political future being reduced to ridicule under imposed leadership.
The Pope invited President Salva Kiir Mayardit and his vice presidents to a retreat in Rome. On behalf of the suffering Christian community worldwide, particularly in South Sudan, the Pontiff kissed President Kiir’s feet as a gesture intended to end the suffering of his people. Unfortunately, this act became what many later described as “the kiss of the Devil’s feet.”
Following the suspension of the papal visit, insecurity continued to escalate, particularly in Unity State. A new and horrifying pattern of violence emerged, including extrajudicial executions of war prisoners who were burned alive. The regime allowed the circulation of graphic information showing executions carried out in a style associated with the Islamic State, with victims filmed appealing to their families before being killed. These acts represented some of the most shocking and merciless killings ever witnessed by the South Sudanese public. South Sudan’s Ambassador to the United States referred to these crimes as “the barbecue rebels.”
Despite Unity State being home to some of the country’s richest oil reserves, it has endured some of the worst human atrocities, both during the long civil war between North and South Sudan and even after independence.
South Sudan Genocide:
The Polish-Jewish scholar Raphael Lemkin, who taught law at Yale and Duke Universities, coined the term genocide in 1944. He combined the Greek word genos (race or tribe) with cide (killing) and defined genocide as a coordinated plan of actions aimed at destroying the essential foundations of life of national groups, with the ultimate goal of annihilating those groups (Totten & Parsons, Century of Genocide, p. 3). Such plans target political and social institutions, culture, national identity, religion, economic existence, and personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and life itself. Genocide is directed against individuals not as individuals, but as members of a national group (Lemkin, 1944, p. 79).
Lemkin’s definition was later adopted by the United Nations Convention on December 9, 1948. Genocide was defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group through:
•Killing members of the group;
•Causing serious bodily or mental harm;
•Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction, in whole or in part;
•Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.
Since the adoption of the convention, the world has witnessed numerous genocides, including the Armenian genocide, the Soviet-engineered famine in Ukraine, the genocide in East Timor, the Hutu genocide in Burundi, the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Darfur genocide. As argued here, South Sudan is experiencing an ongoing Nuer genocide—one that the African Union Commission of Inquiry deliberately avoided labeling as such, instead referring to it as ethnic cleansing.
The Sunday service, December 2013:
The Presbyterian Church in South Sudan is composed of members from diverse communities, including the Nuer, Shilluk, Anyuak, and Murle. On that Sunday, December 15, 2013, Jebel Presbyterian Church was filled with approximately 3,800 worshippers. It was a middle-class church attended by senior government officials, including Vice President Dr. Riek Machar. Other prominent attend the service on that day included Dr. Lam Akol, Governor Simon Kun of Upper Nile State, Speaker of the National Assembly Manasseh Magok, Justice John Luk Jok, and former Unity State Governor Gen. Taban Deng. The service was led by Reverend Paul Rout Khor.
It was therefore unimaginable later that night that unspeakable horrors would unfold. At approximately 10:45 p.m., violence erupted. On the following morning, the Nuer civilians in Juba were deliberately targeted by state security forces trained and equipped to massacre a single ethnic group—the Nuer. Over the following days, coordinated attacks spread to Wau, Kuajok, Aweil, and Rumbek. Between December 16 and 19, 2013, more than 20,000 unarmed Nuer civilians were deliberately killed by organized and trained Dinka militias.
In the Greater Upper Nile states of Unity, Jonglei, and Upper Nile, Nuer civilians fled to UN camps and other places for safety. Schools in Malakal, Bor, and Bentiu were immediately closed, and senior government officials fled to UN camps. The government stopped salaries for Nuer officials and imposed total restrictions on freedom of movement, worship, association, and livelihood. Over 100,000 Nuer civilians were confined within UN camps for nearly ten years, while others—myself included—were forced into exile.
Tragically, the world did not react with sufficient urgency. Similar ethnic cleansing s had already occurred, including those targeting the Murle, Shilluk, and the Jor-bel community of Mvolo County. On December 24, 2013, at 13:35 GMT, the BBC reported emerging evidence of mass ethnic killings in South Sudan. An eyewitness in Juba stated that more than 250 people—primarily Nuer—had been executed by security forces. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay confirmed the discovery of mass graves in Juba, with additional sites identified in Jebel Kujur and near Eden, a Nuer residential area.
BBC journalist Hannah McNeese interviewed a survivor named Simon, who had escaped into a UN camp after sustaining four gunshot wounds. He described being detained with 250 men at a police station, held for two days, and shot at through windows. His testimony was corroborated by other survivors. Witnesses confirmed that gunmen targeted individuals in Nuer areas and those unable to speak the Dinka language.
UN officials, including Toby Lanzer and Special Representative Hilde Johnson, condemned the violence in the strongest terms. The UN Secretary-General urged President Kiir to denounce the killings, which he failed to do. Neither the UN nor the African Union accepted his claim of an attempted coup.
On January 26, 2014, Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior—the widow of Dr. John Garang and herself a Dinka—publicly stated that state security forces were targeting only the Nuer community and described the events as ethnic cleansing. She placed full responsibility on President Salva Kiir Mayardit, citing his refusal to allow internal reforms within the SPLM and his order to disarm Nuer soldiers in the presidential guard as the triggers of the December 15 violence.
Conclusion
The crisis in South Sudan was a destruction intended to subjugate the Nuer community to accept the regime. It fitted what the regime wished to achieve and aimed to bring about the death of civilians with a view to partially destroying whatever remained of the community. This “destruction process” was partial by definition and intended to impact the total community because those responsible for the deed relied on the effect of terror to impose their political domination on survivors. The 15 December events were the South Sudan government’s plan of ethnic cleansing in Juba, particularly suited to such a strategy. The slaughter did not need to be large-scale; it was only to become widely known so that it was terrorizing, and fear would spread throughout the country, as it happened in Juba; it would then echo elsewhere and be expected to work against the Nuer Nation. Since the dawn of time, this form of destruction has been associated with warfare.
The writer is a former member of the National Assembly of Southern Sudan from 2005 to 2010, and currently works as a political analyst. He can be reached via bolgatkouth2@gmail.com or +250787325182.
The writer is a lawyer and a criminologist by profession. He was a former delegate to the High-Level Mediation for South Sudan, alias Tumaini Peace Initiative, where he represented SSPM as its national chairperson for legal and constitutional affairs. He can be reached for comments via eligodakb@gmail.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the responsibility of the author, not Radio Tamazuj.