We Need More Changes In The Police: Activist

This article was last updated on May 25, 2022

Canada: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…
USA: Oye! Times readers Get FREE $30 to spend on Amazon, Walmart…

Barjok Maduok, Secretary General of the Greater Upper Nile, Bahr el Ghazal, Equatoria Youth Association (GUBEYA) underscored the government reform in the police sector, but said more efforts are still wanted in improving the rule of law in South Sudan and the area of respecting human rights.

“The civil society organization is happy to see into it that changes have been made and especially changes that target the police which is the agent in implementing the rule of law. However, we want to see into it that more changes are exerted,” Barjok said.

“We want to see into it that the changes do not only happen at the national level here but it have to go up to the state level,” he added.

He said the changes should be done within the sector, explaining government should promote juniors within the sector after relieving senior ones rather than bringing army into the police or vice-versa.

He said there is the need for the rule of law to apply to all people in the country regardless of any body’s status. He said senior government officials especially Generals have been impediments to the rule of law and said this behavior needs to be changed.

He also called for total reformation of the police into a professional force, saying the police are not being viewed by citizens as friends.

He however, underscored improvement in the sector especially in the area of minimizing insecurity in the town, adding there is also tremendous improvement in the conduct of the police compared to the previous years before the South Sudan independence.

In what appeared as government intensive efforts to improve the conduct of the police – a sector whose force was from the army that had been previously rebels involved into a more than two decades of civil war with Khartoum, it has concluded registration of all the police in the country including all their education level.

The United Nations, one of the government’s partners involved in policing said last week that 46,427 police have been registered.