South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Simon Deng
A vocal journalist who has maintained a hard stance with abuses and hate speeches may face the Union of Journalists of South Sudan in court, the President of the Union, Oyet Patrick Charles said.
Ruot, who was an organizing secretary with the union parted ways with UJOSS in July 2023 and since then has gone into conflict with his former employer, dragging them before the media authority, ministry of labor and even court, as explained by Charles.
All his complains were dismissed by the different institutions as baseless but Ruot continued uttering defamatory statements against the union, he told reporters in Juba yesterday.
“We have a file, the case has been opened, the file is never closed,” Charles said.
“If Ruot comes out and says that I am sorry, forgive me, we will withdraw the case but as long as he continue to call us names, the case will go to court.”
According to Charles, everything Ruot says about the union hold no water.
“There is nothing he is saying which is true, we are not criminals we are not corrupt. If Ruot come out today and say I am sorry, what I have been saying are lies, I do not have evidence, we will throw away the case,” he said.
According to him, Ruot’s utterances are aimed at destroying the reputation of some individuals, including others in institutions which work with UJOSS>
“We have every reason to believe that Mr. Ruot George has been making false statement against the leaders of UJOSS to make the leaders of UJOSS look in a negative light among journalists,” he said.
Charles said that several attempts to resolve the matter have failed including the executive body meeting at UAP, and that the national Labor ministry and the Media Authority have found no substantial evidence over his claims.
“We asked him to produce evidence before the Media Authority, media authority ask him that he should apologize, and we accepted we said, if he says he is sorry for what he has done we will not have any issue, he refused to apologize,” he said.
“We think that he has gone beyond and he is not really listening to all people who are talking to him including the Media Authority so we have only gone to police to report this case to compel him to bring evidence as to what he is saying and indeed if there is no evidence as we have seen before, then let the law take its course.”
Charles said Ruot is disgruntled and it stems from over expectation in payment from UJOSS>
While when still a staff, the union offered to pay him $600, Ruot demanded $2000, he said.
“The good thing with donor money, the owners are there. When you are implementing the project, it would have been the donors themselves to alert anybody that we are corrupt,” he said.
