The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has called on all parties to exercise restraint amid reports of the arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar – the longtime rival of the country’s President Salva Kiir.
UMISS chief Nicholas Haysom said the country risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years” if the nation returned to “a state of war”, following reports that Machar was arrested at his residence in the capital, Juba.
“Tonight, the country’s leaders stand on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict or taking the country forward towards peace, recovery and democracy in the spirit of the consensus that was reached in 2018 when they signed and committed to implementing a Revitalized Peace Agreement,” Haysom said in a statement released early Thursday.
A return to fighting “will not only devastate South Sudan but also affect the entire region”, Haysom added.
According to Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army In Opposition (SPLM/IO) party, a convoy of 20 heavily armed vehicles “forcefully entered” the first vice president’s residence in Juba and disarmed his bodyguards on Wednesday.
The country’s defence minister and chief of national security were in the convoy that delivered an arrest warrant to the vice president, the SPLM/IO said,
“An arrest warrant was delivered to him under unclear charges,” according to a statement, which was shared on Facebook by Reath Muoch Tang, chairman of Machar’s foreign relations committee.
South Sudan’s five-year civil war, in which 400,000 people were killed, ended in a 2018 peace agreement that brought President Salva Kiir and Machar together in a unity government.
