Silent hunt for undocumented foreigners suspended

JUBA – The Director-General for Civic Registry, Nationality, Passport, and Migration Lt. Gen. Atem Marol Biar yesterday suspended the ‘silent search’ for undocumented foreigners for one week.

Last month the government declared a three-month silent search after it realized that a good number of foreigners in the country, particularly Eritreans and Ugandans did not have legal residential documents.

However, Lt. Gen. Atem said, “I want you from now to suspend searching. You just engage their community leaders so that the community leaders should talk to their people.’’

He was speaking to the media and the immigration officers from the eight zones in Juba yesterday.

Gen. Atem said they have learned that the silent search was continuing and ordered the officers to cooperate with the community leaders from those foreign countries.

He also explained the aims of the silent search that was to conduct a fact-finding mission to ascertain the number of foreigners living in South Sudan and whether they have documents or not.

Remedy mooted

“If they don’t have documents, we are not going to chase them away but what we want to do is to make sure that whoever is staying here [in South Sudan] must have an official document and for those who do not have we still give them the temporary document and that is something that we have achieved,” Gen. Atem said.

He instructed the immigration officers to suspend the search for a week to allow foreigners to come to their office for registration willingly instead of forcing them.

“It is very clear now that most of the people don’t have documents. It is not like we are chasing them away, but, they have to be given a temporary stay permit for three months,” Gen Atem explained.

“They have to go to their embassies to process their documents. For instance, if those who do not have documents commit a crime, it will be very difficult to identify the person because he or she is not registered or does not have a permitted document.”

He urged the police officers to monitor the situation for one week without searching for any undocumented foreigner, saying it is the law enforcers who should pass the message to them to go and register.

“I see now people are running away from you [the police] while we are supposed to be friends with the public and I want you to make friendship with the public,” Gen. Atem instructed.

“We don’t want our people to run away; be they foreigners or nationals. They are all our people and I don’t want them to run away from you,” he said.