South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar (L), seen here with President Salva Kiir in 2019, was arrested Wednesday, his party said. File Photo courtesy of STR/EPA-EFE
March 27 (UPI) — South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar was arrested and placed under house arrest, his party said.
The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition, or SPLM-IO, said that several South Sudanese military officials entered Machar’s home Wednesday and served documents written and signed by President Salva Kiir.
The papers said that Machar was removed from the vice presidency and under arrest. Machar purportedly rejected the documents and refused a request to officially resign. Machar was then relieved of his personal devices and placed under house arrest before being moved to another building within the same compound.
His wife was also said to have been placed under house arrest but moved to a different building than Machar.
Acting Chairperson of the National Committee on Foreign Relations for the SPLM-IO Reath Muoch Tang said in a statement Wednesday that Machar’s arrest is a “blatant violation of the Constitution and the Revitalized Peace Agreement,” that “undermines the rule of law and threatens the stability of the nation,” and that the SPLM-IO holds “President Salva Kiir responsible for this reckless abrogation of the peace agreement and call upon the regional and international community to urgently intervene to prevent further escalation.”
The South Sudan Revitalized Peace Agreement was agreed upon by Kirr and Machar in 2018, which formed a unity government and ended a civil war that left almost 400,000 people dead.
“The arrest and detention of [Machar] effectively brings the agreement to a collapse,” SPLM-IO deputy leader Oyet Nathaniel Pierino said in a press conference Thursday.
Concerns of the ramifications related to Machar’s arrest were also raised by the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, whose leader Nicholas Haysom called “on all parties to exercise restraint and uphold the Revitalized Peace Agreement” on Thursday, and that “the country’s leaders stand on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict.”
The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs said Wednesday that it urged President Kiir to “reverse this action [and] prevent further escalation of the situation.”
The U.N. reported Wednesday that fighting in South Sudan had escalated since Tuesday, during which time there were “clashes” reported between Kiir’s South Sudan People’s Defense Forces and Machar’s SPLM-IO south of the capital city of Juba and in the Wun Aliet region. Bombing of civilian areas in the state of Upper Nile has also been reported.