S.Sudan worried about citizens in Sudan

[iolsa]

Juba - South Sudan said on Wednesday it was deeply concerned for the lives of more than 12 000 of its citizens trapped in neighbouring Sudan, ordered to leave by Saturday but without transport to travel southwards.

The Southerners in Sudan's White Nile river port of Kosti are part of a mass migration of people leaving Sudan after the South declared independence in July.

"These people can actually lose their lives, our concern is that  these people might actually be killed, as the government of Sudan is not caring for them anymore," Southern Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin told reporters.

Transport is limited, with many living in makeshift shelters in the town for months, but the governor of the Sudanese border state has said they threaten the security of the region and ordered them to be expelled by May 5.

Sudan has blocked aid agencies from giving the returnees food, Benjamin claimed.

"They have actually removed all their food from the stores that was meant for this, they are preventing them to get drinking water," he said, adding that those that try to leave the camps risk  arrest.

"These people have been there for nearly going to a year now with all their property, they are just waiting for barges to come," he said.

Over 375 000 ethnic Southerners - many of whom have spent decades in the north - have returned to the South since October 2010.

However, up to 500 000 ethnic Southerners remain in the north, despite the passing of an April 8 deadline for them to either formalise their status or leave Sudan.

The expulsion order of those in Kosti would be the first formal order for Southerners to leave, and follows weeks of deadly clashes  in contested border areas between Khartoum and Juba.

Khartoum fears river barges could be used by the South to bring up weapons into border areas and has blocked their movement at the border. - Sapa-AFP



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