Detained in UAE: South Sudan Journalist Faces Backlash for Critiquing President Kiir

Human rights activists and proponents of media freedom are crying foul over the fact that the United Arab Emirates is keeping in custody one of its political commentators in South Sudan, Samuel Peter Oyay, over a month. He was arrested soon after he posted a series of incisive publications in which he accused the top officials of South Sudan of corruption and violence of power.

On September 30, Oyay, one of the most eminent members of the Opinion group against President Salva Kiir, was allegedly abducted at his residence in Dubai. His arrest was after the publication of an article on Radio Tamazuj which he alleged that Kiir was undermining the institutions of the state and embarrassing his long time political opponent Riek Machar who is currently on trial on the accusations of treason.

Oyay also released another report in the same month of the same month in which he blamed Vice President Benjamin Bol Mel of a massive financial scandal. On the assertions made by Oyay, billions of dollars allocated to the construction of roads had been embezzled in an elaborate scheme of government contracts.

The husband was arrested and his wife Vivian Johnson called on the Associated Press to report that the Emirati security forces had raided the apartment without prior notice and had stolen a laptop and two phones before taking her husband. She alleged that the officers had not given any reason of why she was arrested and no paper that had given the permission of the arrest.

Since that time, Johnson claimed she has been able to talk to her husband three occasions which have been strictly supervised. The last time they talked, she said, was under a minute, and Oyay had not told her where he was imprisoned. The Emirati authorities first gave the promise to give statements in five days but this has not been heard of since then.

Johnson and various rights groups consider the arrest a political agenda; done on behalf of the South Sudanese government who wants to ensure that one of their most vocal critics in other countries is silenced. The UAE government, the Foreign Ministry of South Sudan and the security agencies of Juba have not taken to the streets to say anything about the case, or even to ascertain the whereabouts of Oyay.

According to the international human rights organisations, Oyays detention is one of many campaigns to coerce dissenting critics of the South Sudanese government exiled. In 2017, the United Nations probe reported the abduction of two South Sudanese activists in Nairobi, their forced transfer to Juba and execution by the government intelligence agencies. Likewise, in 2023 dissident Morris Mabior Awikjok Bak was arrested in Kenya and deported to South Sudan where he served a sentence over a year.

This is another red flag to the freedom of expression, according to Sarah Qudah, an organization named Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) Middle East and North Africa Director. The arrest of Oyay demonstrates that the UAE does not tolerate independent journalism to a high extent, even when it is committed by the participants who are not Emirati citizens. Worse still, there is not even an inkling of transparency, as it has already taken the course of weeks, and an explanation and a formal charge have not been publicly given yet.

The observers report that the case is playing out despite growing diplomatic and economic relationships between Juba and Abu Dhabi. The UAE has invested billions of dollars infrastructural, agricultural and energy developments in East Africa and it is becoming more and more visible in the current conflict in Sudan where the UAE is heavily invested in business.

Only a few weeks prior to the arrest of Oyay, President Kiir has completed his third official visit to Dubai during which he welcomed Emirati officials to discuss the further development of bilateral cooperation and additional investment into South Sudan. The objections of such deepening relationships among them are that this might make the South Sudan government bold enough to continue hunting down its exiled adversaries with the covert backing of its Gulf partners.

Rights groups are still urging Oyay to be released immediately and the UAE provide them with a legal justification on why he was detained. But until the time that his family learns his location, safety, or future, his family is in limbo, uncertain where he is, whether or not he is safe or not, and clearly there is conspicuous silence on the part of the two governments.