A sad Christmas for Christians in the predominantly Muslim country of Sudan

On the occasion of Christmas, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) would like to draw attention to the increasing marginalization and persecution of Christians in Sudan. “Sudan’s Christians went through a lot of suffering during decades of civil war. But this year, Christmas is characterized by fear and terror: The Sudanese government is following through with a rigorous policy of Islamization, especially since the secession of the predominantly Christian part of South Sudan in July 2011. Christians are facing serious problems if they try to practice their faith,” said the STP’s Africa-consultant, Ulrich Delius, in Göttingen on Wednesday. Again, two pastors were arrested last Friday. In October 2015, the authorities had ordered three churches to be destroyed.

The arrested pastors are Kowa Shamaal and Hassan Abdelrahim of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC). They were picked up early in the morning by the National Security Service (NISS), which is notorious for human rights violations and for being involved in violence and torture. The two churchmen belong to the ethnic communities of the Nuba, who live in the embattled Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan. In the 1990s, the Nuba people suffered from genocide crimes. Since then, tens of thousands of Nuba have sought refuge around the capital Khartoum. Between them and the authorities, there are ongoing conflicts over the construction of churches for refugees.

The authorities did not provide the family members of the detained or other church officials with any further details concerning the backgrounds of the arrests. It is suspected that the pastors were arrested for protesting against the destruction of their churches. In October 2015, both of them had publicly contradicted the official version that the SCOC had built a church on government land in 1998, which is how the authorities in the city of Omdurman had tried to justify the illegal demolition of the church on October 27, 2015. Shamaal’s church in northern Khartoum had already been demolished in June 2014.

Due to the new arrests, Sudan’s Christians are now in fear of a new wave of persecution. It was only on August 5, 2015, that two other South Sudanese pastors of the Presbyterian Evangelistic Church had been released from Sudanese custody. They had been arrested and kept detained for almost eight months because they had protested against the persecution of priests. Following massive international protests, the charges were reduced after the two of them were convicted for less serious offenses. After being released, they sought protection abroad.

Header photo: United Nations Photo via Flickr