CNA Staff, Jul 16, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- After a violent incident between South Sudanese tribal members in a previously peaceful refugee camp in Uganda, a local priest says that tribes must provide conflict management and education, not produce division.
“Tribes, which can be a good medium to learn cultures, languages and traditions, should not be misused to fuel hatred and discord,” said Fr. Lazar Arasu, the Director of Don Bosco Palabek Refugee Services.
Arasu, a native of southern India’s Tamil Nadu State, is a Salesian priest who has lived in East Africa for three decades.
Most people tend to have only a superficial knowledge of their cultures and traditions, he explained. He underscored the need for people to learn the deeper meaning of culture, tradition and their history in the right way in order to have the right attitude to the institution of tribes and cultures.
The Church, the priest said, “should be an umbrella embracing under her shade people of all tribes and differences. When they remain neutral, they remain the true voice of God.”
The Palabek Refugee Settlement in northern Uganda in the Archdiocese of Gulu. It is home to about 55,000 refugees from nearby South Sudan, the world’s youngest country.
The settlement woke to a rude shock after a violent incident left one person dead and at least 20 injured.
The June 23 incident occurred between two communities of South Sudanese refugees. The clash over a piece of land involved members from the Lango and Nuer communities who live alongside 12 other South Sudanese tribes that have been coexisting at the camp for years.
Arasu is concerned that the background of unresolved conflicts in South Sudan has helped push people into mistrust and suspicion of each other. The mood for conflicts among the South Sudanese, including those living in refugee camps, is heightened by the fact that past conflicts have never been resolved,
“In between the wars, no community dialogue was encouraged; often the peace talks involved only political leaders who held ‘synthetic’ peace deals. Full pledged wars had roots in communities at grassroots,” Arasu said in his reflection, “Building Bridges of Peace in South Sudan,” provided to ACI Africa, CNA’s African news partner.
He called for capacity building among leaders to help them learn the right attitudes to tribes, ethnic differences, and conflict management. This will help end protracted violence.
The Salesians in Uganda participate in peace meetings, counseling and casual visits to the families. This help makes progress to restore peace, especially among refugees seeking safety in the country. The Salesians have assured settlement authorities and security forces of their support and assistance, Arasu said.
“May God continue to help us to build bridges of peace and help us to be bridges of peace and harmony,” said the priest.
Members of the Salesians of Don Bosco have been ministering at the refugee settlement in Palabek for three years.
“They are taking steps to be close to the people, especially those affected by violence, by way of reaching out to them with food and a few other necessities,” said the priest.
At the Palabek Refugee Settlement, the Salesians report, the Acholi are the largest community at 45 percent, followed by the Lutuku at 15 percent and the Lango at 10 percent. Other tribes such as the Nuer make up 3 percent or less.
The Salesians help provide psycho-social support and pastoral care for thousands of Christians. Their four nursery schools educate over 1,000 children, more than 700 children are enrolled in Salesian primary and secondary schools, and other initiatives help support 700 families.
At their vocational training center, 400 refugees and 50 host community Ugandans are students seeking work skills, the Salesians’ news service Mission Newswire reports.
South Sudan’s five-year civil war began shortly after South Sudan gained independence in 2011.
Different parties to the conflict deliberately prevented humanitarian aid from reaching civilians. The policy of deliberate starvation along ethnic and humanitarian lines caused acute food security problems for 55% of the population.
The war killed hundreds of thousands of people and left 2.1 million people internally displaced, with another 2.5 million as refugees abroad, according to the United Nations.
People in South Sudan continue to face serious humanitarian concerns, exacerbated by government corruption, locust swarms, and floods in October that destroyed crops and livestock.
Arasu blamed the protracted violence in South Sudan on tribal politics and “deep rooted tribal hatred”.
He attributed this tribal hatred to several factors. The British colonists sowed disunity among the various communities in South Sudan and favored some tribes over others, a situation that continues to manifest itself in incidences of violence to date.
“This instilled prejudice, jealousy, suspicion and hatred on tribes with larger populations,” Fr. Arasu said.
Under Arab rule, he said, the Sudanese indigenous tribes and people were suppressed on racial and religious grounds.
There has been systematic looting of native wealth and other human rights abuses, perpetrated both by foreigners and by native rulers.
In addition, the priest sees natural tension between different communities based on their different ways of life, such as conflict between pastoral tribes who herd livestock and agrarian tribes focused on agriculture.
Suspicion and mistrust mingled with prejudice can cause irritation and annoyance that can trigger war, causing enormous damage even lasting for years, said Arasu. The danger is “any small incidents such as a little misunderstanding at water-points, playgrounds and markets can be blown into full-fledged war.”
“Having witnessed the bloody past, it is difficult to believe the coming of peace. Down through the decades, numerous peace agreements have been signed and discarded thoughtlessly,” he said.
“Until peace is restored at grassroots there can be no meaningful peace at the national level,” he said. “South Sudan needs peace more than anything else.”
Tribal animosity caused some problems for the appointment of the new Catholic Archbishop of Juba Stephen Ameyu. Some critics presented themselves as leaders of the Bari tribe and objected that he was not a member of the tribe. However, in December 2019 the Juba-based Bari Community Association made clear that these critics’ position did not speak for the entire community.
In January the Republic of South Sudan and the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance signed a peace declaration in Rome. Under the peace agreement facilitated by the Catholic community of Sant’Egidio, opposition groups and the South Sudanese government recommitted to cease hostilities, pursue political dialogue, and allow humanitarian aid for the people of South Sudan.
A new government was sworn into office in February.
A version of this story was first published by ACI Africa. It has been adapted by CNA.
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I hope the people of Israel come out of this safely. I had the opportunity to go there on a pilgrimage with my church in 2019. It was an immense privilege to walk in so many biblical towns and have daily Mass in all the churches. A beautiful and interesting place. The site of the crucifixion and the tomb was amazing to see and touch. Very spiritually moving. We were there during the Trump administration, and the American embassy had just been moved to Jerusalem. I was so sad to hear news of this attack this morning. Many of those living there are transplanted Americans. Please pray for them.
Israel will prevail, but at a cost. Things will get ugly. The Palestinians blame Israel for their misery and stupidity. Man for man, the Israelis put them to shame.
Palestinians are intelligent people but have been manipulated and misled by Hamas. It’s a tragedy.
Biden built this; he, Valerie Jarret and Obama. The finger prints are obvious. I wouldn’t be surprised at all that many of the munitions Hamas used were sold off from the Ukraine and have our insignias. There is no oversight and Ukraine’s government is the epitome of moral bankruptcy. This news just makes the Lacrimarum Vale that much deeper, darker and loathsome.
From Islamist anti-Semitism is behind Israel’s darkest hour since the Yom Kippur war, by Jake Wallis Simons, October 7, 2023:
Excerpt (with link omitted, bold style added):
In response, sensible voices must be absolutely clear: this was an anti-Semitic attack. It was of a piece with the pogroms carried out by the Cossacks, the Iraqi mobs during the Farhud, and the Nazis.
That last example is especially powerful, as a direct line can be drawn from Hitler to Hamas. During the Second World War, the extremist Palestinian leader Amin al-Husseini, who compared Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli, worked with Nazi officials to translate Third Reich ideology into an Arabic context and transmit it into the Middle East via radio, leaflets and other means. His twisted ideology rings loudly in our ears today.
Look at Hamas’s charter. Article 32 – a conspiracy theory which accuses the Zionists of wishing to take over the entire territory between the Nile in Egypt and the Euphrates in Iraq, an area of thousands of square miles – says: “Their scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” To describe Hamas as being influenced by Nazi propaganda is insufficient. This is Nazi propaganda.
I don’t believe that this was a surprise attack. It is likely a “playing the victim” strategy.
Interesting comment, considering the Jerusalem Post is suggesting the attack is a contender for the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history. “How did Israel fall so far to such an inferior enemy?” the tagline asks. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-765254
Perhaps you will claim that the JPost story is also part of the same strategy? A rabbi in Jerusalem claims that the earthquake in Morocco was caused by their king’s call for Jerusalem to become the Palestinian capital. https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-761707
Seems like there’s no shortage of dotted-line thinking on both sides.
Which side do you think is playing victim?
After the British occupiers left Palestine, the United Nations 1947 Resolution no. 181 mandated the creation of two nations, Israel and Palestine, each with almost equal land areas. After wars and perpetual tensions through the decades the land area has been disproportionately made unequal by continued Israeli grabbing of Palestinian lands in defiance of UN and international laws leaving the Palestinians with only small portions that is the West Bank and Gaza even as the state of Palestine remains not fully established and sovereign today. While the Western media portray the Palestinians as the bad guys and terrorists, it is actually the Israelis who are so by their continued dispossession and dislocation of the Palestinians in violation of UN and international laws. Even present day pilgrims to the Holy Land can readily see the continued construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank contravening UN and international laws. Seen from this perspective, the modern state of Israel can be compared to China defying UN and international laws like the International Court of Arbitration that judged China’s grabbing of Philippine maritime territory as illegal. Palestinian militants rising against Israel mighty army can be compared to the Filipinos’ decrepit coast guard standing up against China’s bully coast guard as seen more and more on TV news recently.
There are many, many questions that need to be answered about the attack on Israel yesterday. How could a country with intelligence agencies renowned for their ability to infiltrate its enemies and allies alike be caught so flat-footed? This was a major operation and the Mossad apparently had no inkling that it was coming. That is very hard to believe. The surveillance and detection systems at the border were reportedly jammed by Hamas. If that is true, why did this in and of itself not cause an alarm to go off? Where was the world-class Israeli Air Force, which must patrol the relatively short border around the clock? Paragliders sailed right across the border after dawn had already broken without a sign of an Israeli aircraft, which could have easily picked them off. Even more incredibly, there is video of Hamas troops casually cutting through the border fence later in broad daylight with no cover and then streaming through with their pickup trucks and motorcycles in the open desert. Again, an airstrike by jets that could have arrived in a couple of minutes would have wipe these people out in an instant. This is either an epic and astonishing failure of Israel’s entire security apparatus or there is more to this story than what we see on the surface. I don’t pretend to know what happened and am afraid that no one is going to be seriously interested in finding out.
If Israel’s intelligence was taken off guard it should give us pause to wonder where our own defense system may have gaps. There’s no perfect intelligence department. We become complacent at our own peril.
The Gaza strip, and all Palestinian territory, is heavily infiltrated by Mossad, Shin Bet, and IDF personnel. *No way were they surprised.*
Israel either made or allowed this to occur–so that they could draw sympathy upon themselves, divert attention from the impending victory of gentile Christian Putin over Jewish Zelensky (bad PR for the Tribe!), and use this event as a pretext to wipe out the Palestinians.
The evidence presented thus far of an attack (fan para-gliders? really? unblocked and unnoticed truck and AFV attacks? really?) with attendant massive Israeli deaths looks suspicious and stagey–though there are probably some real Israel deaths as well. The bigwigs in Tel Aviv–and now Jerusalem–don’t mind killing (or allowing to be killed) a few of the lesser Israelis in order to advance Israeli goals of total dominion over the mid-east.
The effect of this will be to get the US to pony up even more billions for Israel (while Americans in Maui get 700 dollars for their torched homes) and allow Netanyahu to do what he has always wanted to do–genocide the Palestinians.
Also, the linking of the Palestinians to Iran will (of course) be made, and the US will now be easily induced to attack that country, especially as Biden needs a victory–since his proxy war against Russia is faring so badly.
Many Americans, including Christians are waking up however. They no longer believe the traditional 70s and 80s propaganda about dem Evil Iranians and dem Evil Ay-Rabs and dose good Israelis.
The US is a fast-fading empire. It literally does *nothing* right (see Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine). It is ruled by wicked and foolish men (and now women). But it does have, unlike Iraq, many weapons of mass destruction, and a mad beast is always dangerous.
Anyway, break out the popcorn and enjoy the Apocalyptic show! (I’m kidding, pray and make sacrifices for peace!).