Take Action for Human Rights

Do not execute Magai Matiop Ngong


Magai Matiop Ngong was a schoolboy when he was sentenced to death for murder in an incident which, he told the judge, was an accident. Only 15 years old, he did not have a lawyer to help him until after his trial. Two years later, at 17, he is on death row in Juba Central Prison, surviving on the hope that he will win his appeal against his execution and get back to school.

When Magai Matiop Ngong was 15, he loved running and gospel singing. He was in secondary school and had ambitions to help people when he grew up. But life as he knew it came to a sudden end in 2017, when he was convicted of murder.

The judge sentenced him to death by hanging. “The feeling is not good at all,” he says, “to be informed that you are going to die. I am not happy for that….”

Last year, seven people were hanged in South Sudan: one of them, like Magai, was just a child. Two years after his sentence, Magai is on death row in Juba Central Prison waiting for his appeal, but he hasn’t lost his “hope…to be out and to continue…school.”

Take Action: Tell the President of South Sudan to cancel Magai’s death sentence.

Bona Malwal
Permanent Representative of the Republic of South Sudan to the United Nations