The development is causing some church leaders to close schools and
congregations and consider moving to the South, but even those actions are
difficult because they see themselves as Northern Christians.
“Some churches are being left empty and those in the outskirts without
proper documentation are being forced to close. Some individual government
leaders are going there and telling pastors to close them down,” said the
Rev. Ramadan Chan Liol, general secretary of the Sudan Council of Churches,
in a telephone interview.
South Sudan became an independent state on July 9, creating hope for many
Christians, especially in the North, where they were never allowed full
freedom to operate. But they face increased threats from individual groups, according to Chan, a Baptist.
“The groups have collected names of pastors and are warning them against
conducting church services on Sundays or they would be killed,” said the
leader of the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox church grouping.
He said that renewal of identity cards and other important documents for the
leaders and the South Sudanese were being denied. “The people are not being
allowed to take property like refrigerators and cookers. Money is also being
taken away by the soldiers at the border points,” he said.
Government officials in Khartoum are generally barred from speaking with the
Press, and an official at the Sudanese embassy in Nairobi said he had no
knowledge of any harassment.
Roman Catholic Bishop Daniel Adwok, the Archdiocese of Khartoum auxiliary,
said church schools were considering closing since church0-based charities
had reduced funding after most people traveled to the South. “Many parents
who are displaced persons are not able to raise the required school fees
given their little income. So the church is finding it difficult to continue
running the schools without enough resources,” said Adwok.
President Omar Hassan al-Bashir declared Sudan would embrace Sharia law and
Islam as the official state religion after the breakaway. On August 7, Qutbi
al-Mahdi, the political bureau officer of the ruling National Congress Party,
told the Sudan Tribune that the decrees would soon be issued.
In the war-torn South Kordofan region, the Anglican cathedral and offices in
Kadugli have been ransacked and looted, according to Bishop Andudu Adam
Elnail of the Kadugli Episcopal Diocese.
“I am told that armed men went house to house, searching for me, calling my
name,” Elnail told the U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Africa
on August 4 in Washington. He said a member of his congregation
had witnessed the Sudan Armed Forces and Northern militia groups burying 100
or more dead bodies in mass graves in Kadugli.
“If I were not here today to testify before you, I do not know whether I
would be in a mass grave in Kadugli now,” he said. Elnail said he has
received frequent reports of the bombing of civilians in the Nuba Mountains
by the Sudan Air Force. He expressed the people’s fears that a
state-sponsored ethnic cleansing campaign was unfolding there.
