#nimule

Catching Fish A fisherman of the Madi tribe using a bow and arrow to catch fish at the Fola Rapids on the White Nile, close to the Ugandan border near Nimule, Sudan, circa 1952. 

Original Publication: Picture Post - 5638 - Bowmen Fishers Of The Nile - pub. 15th March 1952 

The Times Jerome Starkey, in Nimule

A fragile ceasefire in South Sudan appeared to be crumbling yesterday, with each side accusing the other of breaching it.

Both the rebels and the Government claimed to be acting in self defence, insisting they were committed to the terms of a ceasefire agreement struck last week. Yet refugees said it was still too early to go home, for fear of fresh ethnic killings and horrific abuses which have split the country in two.

“The war hasn’t stopped,” said Elizabeth Jol, whose best friend was shot and died at her feet as they fled a rebel onslaught in Bor, 130 miles north of Juba. “This is the second time,” she said, referring to an earlier massacre of her fellow Dinka, in 1991.

Ms Jol was one of thousands of Dinka who have sought refuge in Nimule, close to the border with Uganda. “We need the rebels to go back to their own lands,” she said. “Otherwise I won’t go back. I have seen what they do.”

As many as 10,000 people are thought to have died since December 15, when a power struggle within the ruling party erupted along ethnic lines. It has divided the country between supporters of President Kiir, who is a Dinka, and his former deputy, Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. Almost 500,000 people have fled their homes.

The ceasefire, signed in Addis Ababa on Thursday, committed both sides to “cease all military actions aimed at each other”, as well as any actions that could undermine the peace process. “It is not the Dinka citizens fighting us, it is the Government influencing them,” said a Nuer teacher who sought refuge in a UN camp in Juba. “It is the politicians.”

Dinka soldiers burst into his home, but his life was spared because he recognised one of them. “We played dominoes together in Malakal,” he said.

His 15-year-old nephew and a cousin, aged 30, were less fortunate. Both were driven away in a lorry on December 16, he said, and his wife found their bodies the next day, in a police station in Gudela, in the northwest of the capital. “There were more than 200 people dead,” she said. “Shot in the head, some in the chest, some in the legs and arms.”

On a flimsy foam mattress, in the camp next to Juba airport, she wakes every night dreaming of the killers. “It is like I was there,” she said. “I can never live next to a Dinka again.”