Little Bashir

Well, Christmas and New Years in Amsterdam were a nice and well needed break. It felt like Christmas mostly because of the cold and all of the “Red Lights”. It was a little harder to go home this time and if it was not for the cold I might have gone AWOL.

I returned to Torit from my Christmas vacation to find that nothing had been done regarding the 2 year old boy stuck in the Torit Prison. It has now been a month and a half since his mother escaped the prison. Her crime…adultery.

Bashir is his name and he had to spend Christmas alone without family in the Torit Prison which I must say is nothing like the correction facilities we have at home. There are no beds, nothing we would call a washroom, and only one meal a day. Makes me feel a little guilty for complaining about having to come back to Torit after my own Christmas vacation.

The goal is to find little Bashir a home. I have been working on the issue of little Bashir with Human Rights, Child Protection, and the Torit Child Welfare Office to try to find a solution. So far the best that can be done is that someone from the Torit Child Welfare Office will visit little Bashir at the prison once a week to check on his welfare and they have another female prisoner watching over him during the week. I visited the prison yesterday on this matter as well as others. I found little Bashir wandering around on his own wearing only a green tank top. No one was taking care of him. His belly distended likely
from malnutrition. Hopefully we can get him out
of here soon.

The conditions of the prison are abhorred. The toilet is a whole in the ground and the kitchen is definitely lacking the essentials. There are 19 children living in the prison right now with their mothers. 10 of them are below the age of 8 months. Many of the female prisoners end up giving birth to their children while in prison. Several of the prisoners are also sick and require medical attention. Some have been waiting for over a month.

It is busy here in Torit these days. The level of serious crimes seems to be increasing the closer we get to elections. Cattle raiding related deaths are occurring on almost a daily basis now and several people have been killed or injured. The most serious case involved a group of villages from Lopa County whereby they coordinated an attack on another group of villagers from stealing 259 cattle. The local government sent a group of both SSPS police officers and SPLA soldiers to investigate and establish security in the area. The victims of the attack received information that the people responsible for the attack were traveling in a group en route to their locality and ambushed the vehicles carrying the SSPS, SPLA, and some government officials killing 10 people. Tensions are now quite high in this area.

Yesterday one of my fellow Canadian RCMP contingent members, Constable Charles OBENG, was driving a UN marked vehicle on his way to conduct training in Wau. He was with two other UNPOL officers and a Language Assistant when he noticed that they were being followed by an SPLA vehicle armed with a machine gun. The SPLA vehicle passed them and cut them off. They got out and forced Constable Charles and his colleagues out of their vehicle at gun point yelling in Arabic or some other Southern Sudanese dialect. One of the SPLA soldiers went to strike Charles in the head with his AK47. Charles moved at the last second and was struck in the shoulder. The SPLA soldiers then got back into their vehicle and left. The reason for their actions is still unknown. In any case it is an unfriendly reminder that this place is very unpredictable and we have to remember to be constantly aware of our surroundings, watch our backs, and keep our heads down. We are all happy that Charles is okay.

The dry season is taking its toll on the community here and us. We are running out of water to shower with. Some days there is none. The have allocated 4.5 litres of water for us to use as drinking water which is not enough. I have taken to boiling the water now before drinking it. I can not handle the colour though so now I throw in a tea bag after boiling it to give it some flavour. I have about 4 weeks left here at my post and have been pretty busy. Between little Bashir, the almost daily killings due to cattle raidings, and the planning and coordinating of a few final Long Range Patrols before I leave I do not have a lot of free time, which is a good thing. I will be heading out on my last Long Range Patrol next week for 3 days and then it is all downhill from there.

Cheers,

Rory

(Photos from top to bottom: 1) The Torit Prison, 2) Little Bashir, 3)Female prisoners with their children. Many give birth while in prison and are nursing their newborns, 3) Mother with newborn, 4) Kitchen/cooking area, 5) Washroom, 6 & 7) Male prisoners who are very ill and have been waiting a month for medical attention, 8) Cpt. Mark ERKULANO (Deputy Prison Commander), Brig. Zacharia KUOL (OIC of Production), Col. Brown WUAK (Prison Commander), and Cpt. Anthony OHURO (Prison Adminstrator), 9) Little Bashir and I)