Catholic Information Service for Africa (Nairobi)
25 November 2008
document
From the 2008 report by the international Catholic pastoral charity, Aid to the Church in Need
The jailing of Gillian Gibbons, a British primary school teacher working in Khartoum, revealed the scale of religious freedom abuses in Sudan. Ms Gibbons, from Liverpool, received a 15-day prison term in November 2007 for offences against the prophet of Islam after allowing a teddy bear to be named Mohammed in a school competition. She narrowly escaped receiving 40 lashes. Pressure on the Khartoum government was already intense amid the continued humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a region with comparatively few Christians. Within a few days of her imprisonment, Sudan President Omar al-Bashir was forced to intervene and release Ms Gibbons before her prison term had run its course.
The incident, in the capital, Khartoum, points to the growing gulf in terms of religious tolerance opening up between northern Sudan and the south. The latter was ceded local control as part of a six-year programme set out in the January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement. In the 10 regions of southern Sudan, freedom of worship is guaranteed as a principle of government.
However in the north citizens are subject to Shari'a Islamic law, as interpreted by the National Congress Party. Muslim women are banned from marrying Christian men and alcohol is forbidden. These are just some of a series of laws, some of which theoretically carry extreme sentences such as corporal punishment including mutilation of limbs.
But the main problem for Christians and other non-Muslims is the strict ban on apostasy. In theory, offences of this kind carry the death penalty. The ban puts people at grave risk of being accused of encouraging Muslims to abandon their faith. Religious organisations in northern Sudan, including the Churches, are obliged to restrict their activities to ensure they do not attract people from other faiths.
The problems are compounded by the vulnerability of many Christians. In Khartoum, hundreds of thousands live in displacement camps having escaped the south during the civil war of 1983-2004. Addressing the rights of non-Muslims in Khartoum, Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir set up a commission in February 2007 but reports claimed little progress had been made. One key break-through however has been the release of more than 840 women imprisoned with their 160 children for alcohol production and distribution offences. For 30 years the state refused all permissions for the construction of churches until finally the Ministry for Planning and Public Property approved the erection of three church buildings near Khartoum. Other churches, built without planning permission, have been partially destroyed.
Meantime, in south Sudan, despite the rise of a regional government, Church leaders have repeatedly claimed that the Khartoum government is intent on Islamization. They claim people have been pressurised into becoming Muslims through a vast system of schools, hospitals and other welfare support structures funded by Islamist organisations. Aid is desperately needed in this massively deprived region still recovering from a civil war which claimed up to three million lives.
2007: The US State Department Report on International Religious Freedom criticised the authorities in Khartoum. It states that Christians in northern Sudan repeatedly complained about social discrimination both in schools and in the work-place. The State government and local authorities in northern Sudan applied pressure on Church leaders to give up property in central Khartoum dating back to the colonial era (before 1957). The government was also reported as refusing the Church permission to build on its own land. Khartoum stated they wanted to buy the land from church leaders for redevelopment.
January 2007: Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok Kur of Khartoum spoke out against the Khartoum government, accusing it of "playing games" with the people. He said Khartoum was not committed to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed with south Sudan leaders two years earlier. The bishop said the government had failed to help internally displaced people - many of them Christians - return to their homelands in the south. He said government treatment of non-Muslims in the Khartoum area remained very poor. But he praised the Khartoum authorities for granting permission for the erection of three churches in the area, the first authorisation of its kind given to the Catholic Church in 30 years.
January 2007: Police officers used tear gas to attack an Episcopalian church in Khartoum diocese. Inside were 800 people attending a New Year's Eve prayer vigil. Among those present was Sudan Vice President Abel Alier. Six people were injured. Damage to the church was estimated at US$7,000. No action was taken against the police officers.
April 2007: A man wearing the uniform of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/Movement (south Sudan political/military movement) blew himself up during an open-air religious event near a Baptist Church in Khorfulus, in the Upper Nile region. Six children were killed in the attack and five were wounded.
April 2007: An Egyptian named Daniel Girgis, aged 37, and Sudanese Markous Tiya, Rihab Kafi Jadeen, and another unidentified young man, all Evangelical Christians, were assassinated after holding a Christian catechetical class in the Nuba Mountains. The four were members of the Bahry Evangelical Church in Khartoum. The assassins were not identified but, according to local sources, suspicion fell on Islamic fundamentalists, irritated by the evangelical activities of the Christian group.
May 2007: Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need, Bishop Adwok of Khartoum said that the Khartoum government was using the Darfur crisis as a smokescreen for the spread of Islam into the mainly Christian south. In an ACN interview given ahead of his keynote address at an ACN conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the bishop said Khartoum was working with Islamic organisations in the Middle East to fund mosques, schools and hospitals all with the specific aim of evangelisation. Once again questioning the government's commitment to the 2005 peace agreement and its commitment to religious freedom, he said: "The government is ringing the same bell of Islamizing Sudan while at the same time talking about the importance of the CPA."
June 2007: Adam Adam, a humanitarian worker for a relief organisation connected with Churches Together, a partner of Caritas, was killed by three armed men. He was one of the leaders of the refugee camp in Khamsa Degaig, near Zalingei, west of Darfur, and home to 100,000 displaced people.
September 2007: Five young people were killed in a suicide attack by a militant member of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA). The terrorist released a grenade after walking into a church in Khorfulus, 30 miles south-west of Malakal, in the Upper Nile state. The dead were named as: Donguei Matok Chan, aged eight, Dhieu Nyandual, 20, Nyaniok Ryak Chol Ayoum, 11, Nyawyly Kon Rwaj, 11, and 17-year-old Simon Chol Charles Thon Arob.
November 2007: Gillian Gibbons, a teacher from Liverpool, UK, working in a primary school in Khartoum, was arrested after a colleague reported her for insulting Islam. She was accused of allowing a child in her class of seven-year-olds to name a teddy bear Mohammed in a school competition. She was tried immediately and sentenced to 15 days in prison. Islamic authorities and protest groups demanded that she receive 40 lashes and six months in prison. After an international outcry, on 4th December she was pardoned by President Omar al-Bashir and was deported back to the UK.
June 2008: International Christian Concern (ICC) announced that up to 90 percent of homes in the disputed oil-rich region of Abeyi were burned down in new clashes between government troops and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). The compound of the Catholic church was also attacked. The conflict forced up to 80,000 southern Sudanese residents to leave the disputed area. According to ICC, northern Sudanese troops have taken control of Abeyi in direct violation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005. They predict that the conflict would create a new humanitarian crisis. In an ICC interview, Ruben Benjamin reported: "70-80,000 people are now living in the bush surrounding Abeyi - kids and women - they need quick humanitarian help."
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