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The first vice president of South Sudan, Riek Machar, a long -time rival of the president of the Salva Kiir country, has been put under house arrest, says his party.
An armed convoy led by senior security officials, including the Minister of Defense, entered the Machar residence in the capital, Juba, and disarmed his bodyguards on Wednesday night, said the popular liberation movement of Sudan in opposition (SPLM/IO).
“Technically, Dr. Machar is under house arrest, but security officials initially tried to carry it,” said Rath Muoch Tang, president of the Party Foreign Relations Committee.
The government has not yet commented.
The UN has been warning that Sudan from the South is on the verge of a return to the civil war after a scaling of conflict between Machar and the president who has been building for weeks.
The two leaders agreed in August 2018 to end a five -year civil war that killed almost 400,000 people.
But in the last seven years, its relationship has become increasingly tense amid ethnic tensions and sporadic violence.
The SPLM/IO said that Machar was arrested along with his wife Angelina Tey, who is also the interior minister of the country.
“He was given an arrest warrant under unclear charges,” Tang said in a statement, qualifying the action a “shameless violation of the Constitution and the revitalized peace agreement.”
“The arrest of the first vice president without due process undermines the rule of law and threatens the stability of the nation,” he added.
The UN mission in South Sudan has warned that the new newest nation in the world risked the “hard profits of the last seven years” if he returned to “a state of war”, after reports of the arrest of Machar.
“Tonight, the country’s leaders are on the verge of falling in generalized conflicts,” said in a statement On Wednesday.
The violations of the 2018 Peace Agreement “will not only devastate South Sudan, but will also affect the entire region,” he added.
British and American embassies have reduced their diplomatic personnel and urged their citizens to leave the country, while Norwegian and German embassies have closed their operations in Juba.
The growing tensions occur in the midst of renewed clashes between the loyal forces to the two rivals in the northern city of Nasir in the state of the upper Nile rich in oil.
