Tag: Khartoum

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Christianity Today Middle East Published Articles

As Churches Offer Refuge, Sudanese Christians Refine Theology of War

Image: Ahmed Satti / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Hajj Atiya, an elderly Sudanese woman living in Khartoum, was already ill.

And then the war started.

“The planes bombed from above, the bullets were flying below,” she said. “We stayed in our house, afraid, while all outside was boom, boom, boom.”

All she had in the house was flour, to bake bread. At least she had that.

Mariam, who came to Khartoum from the Nuba Mountains to get medicine, went several days without water. And then a bomb hit the neighboring building, which collapsed upon her own.

“Whenever the airplanes disappeared overhead, we ran outside in search of food,” she said. “But we had to hide behind buildings to avoid the gunfire, with corpses strewn on our right and left.”

An unnamed doorman had it still worse.

“For ten days we couldn’t leave our home,” he said. “The shops are closed, and soldiers are in the streets.”

Every Sudanese of means in his Kafouri neighborhood of Khartoum had left town at the first sign of violence, which began April 15. He and the other guards were left behind to protect the properties. But the building owner, when the doorman called to ask for money or help, hung up on him.

Mariam found someone willing to provide transport out of the capital. But she couldn’t afford the 50-cent fare. All she had was oil and soap.

Atiya had only one option left.

“I prayed to God: Save us,” she said. “God answered, and someone came to take us away.”

Somehow, each escaped with their families 85 miles southeast to Wad Madani. Atiya found a place to rest under a tree. Mariam spent the night on the street. But each now numbers among the 122 families staying in two local evangelical schools, with dozens more sleeping in the city’s churches.

“The war is ongoing, and the people keep coming,” said Edward Hussein, an evangelical pastor. “The situation is difficult, and it is only getting worse.”

Only scant support has come from abroad. But local believers donated funds, food, and beds from their own homes. Until now, every arriving family has been given an aid package that includes lentils, flour, sugar, oil, tea, and soap.

But for how long?

“If the situation continues, what can we do?” asked Habil Thomas, country director for Nigeria-based Calvary Ministries. “God is the only one who can intervene, as we pray for peace in Khartoum and all Sudan.”

So far, Wad Madani has been spared.

Located three hours from Khartoum along the banks of the Blue Nile, the capital of Gezira state governs an agricultural center once anticipated to become a new breadbasket of Africa. While development has stalled, the abundance of crops and relatively lower cost of living—coupled with employment opportunities on the farms—has drawn many here to safety.

Because Khartoum is destroyed.

“If the fighting doesn’t stop, it will be a humanitarian crisis,” said Ezekiel Kondo, Anglican archbishop of Sudan. “Nobody can help anyone else here, because all are helpless.” His residence in All Saints Cathedral was situated one block from…

This article was originally published at Christianity Today, on May 12, 2023. Please click here to read the full text.

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Christianity Today Middle East Published Articles

Khartoum Churches Damaged as Sudan Descends Closer to Civil War

Image: Ahmed Satti / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images

Sudan’s most Christian neighborhood is under attack.

Collateral damage amid severe clashes between the army and its previously partnered militia, churches in the Bahri district of the capital Khartoum and surrounding areas have witnessed the worst of the past three weeks of fighting.

The Evangelical Presbyterian church suffered a fire as munitions exploded in a nearby market. The Coptic Orthodox church was struck by a rocket. And All Saints Anglican Cathedral was occupied by militant forces.

Over 500 people have been killed, with more than 4,000 injured.

“The situation is very serious,” said Ismail Kanani, general secretary of the Sudanese Bible Society. “I am trapped in my house, without power and water.”

Prices for food and fuel are skyrocketing, electricity supply has been cut off in much of the capital, and hospitals have been looted and are barely operating. A three-day truce has been agreed—and violated—to allow civilian escape and embassy evacuations.

Almost all Christians have left the area, said Abdalrahim Musa, director of the Evangelical Cultural Center of the Khartoum Presbyterian church. An eyewitness to the carnage, like many other Christians he fled three hours south to Wad Madani, an area relatively distant from the conflict.

But in their absence, he hears reports of widespread looting of their properties.

They are not the only ones displaced. More than 100,000 people have fled Sudan, according to the United Nations, with an additional 334,000 displaced within the country.

Foreign governments have frantically sought to evacuate their citizens. Under cover of armed drones, the US organized a land convoy for 300 Americans and other nationalities to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan. From there, many board a boat to Saudi Arabia for relocation elsewhere.

It is more difficult for Sudanese—and sometimes exploitative. One family stated it was stuck at the Egyptian border, unable to pay the $40,000 fare demanded for crossing. While there is no collected list of Christian casualties, three family members of the guard at Musa’s center were shot in the head, presumably caught in the crossfire. Two children from his church were also killed, as was his…

This article was originally published at Christianity Today, on May 2, 2023. Please click here to read the full text.

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Africa Published Articles World Watch Monitor

Sudanese Pastors Pressured to ‘Inform’ or Stand Trial

This article was first published by World Watch Monitor on December 16, 2016.

sudan-map

Forty-eight year old father of three Revd Yamane Abraha received an ultimatum in Khartoum following a trip to Ethiopia in the fall of 2015.

“(Sudanese government) security threatened me, saying I would have to appear in court either as a witness, or an accused,” the Evangelical Baptist Church of Khartoum pastor told WWM. “But my father was sick, so unlike others I couldn’t escape.”

Abraha was one of several Sudanese Christians gathered abroad to pray for their nation. Among them were Revd Hassan Abduraheem Kodi Taour and Revd Kuwa Shamal, Sudan Church of Christ pastors from the Nuba Mountains region.

Also attending was Czech Christian aid worker Petr Jašek. According to Middle East Concern, these three had helped facilitate financial assistance to pay for the medical treatment of a Darfurian university student who had suffered burn wounds when government security attacked a campus demonstration in Omdurman, north of the capital Khartoum.

Sudanese at the meeting suspected there were spies around their Addis Ababa hotel. Then shortly after their return to Khartoum, the police arrested Taour, Shamal and Jašek, in December 2015. They have now been in detention for a year. Detained along with them is Abdulmonem Abdumawla, also from Darfur, who helped facilitate the medical treatment for the student.

The four are charged with waging war against the Sudanese state, espionage, conspiracy to carry out criminal acts, and undermining the authority of the state through violence. Trial proceedings finally begun in August have been postponed repeatedly in recent months. They could face the death penalty.

Delayed escape

Abraha was not arrested until three months after his colleagues, on 13 March, and then held for only one day. Security ordered him to report back daily, and on 24 March told him he would have to appear in court in the role of his choice: testify against the others, or be charged along with them.

On 26 March his father died.

Abraha gathered his family and traveled eight hours east by bus to bury him in their hometown of Kassala, on the border with Eritrea. And there he dropped off the radar, ditched his cell phone, and waited.

Two weeks later he returned to Khartoum and set his plan in motion. Nervously he checked his surroundings before going to buy a ticket to Egypt.

With his wife he exchanged notes on paper serviettes, which they wet and discarded when read. Discreetly they packed their children’s belongings, lest they tip off authorities at school.

Abraha then checked with a friendly security officer that his name was not on a watch list. And on 20 April, he told his children they would have a family picnic near the airport. Relatives—and kids—were surprised to learn they were saying ‘goodbye’.

In Egypt, Abraha is now involved in training for discipleship and church planting, and supervises 15 house churches among Sudanese refugees.

Over 31,000 Sudanese in Egypt are registered with the UN High Commission for Refugees, according to its August 2016 report. Unofficial estimates can exceed well over one million.

Most have fled the ongoing violence in Darfur and the southern regions of Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains bordering South Sudan.

Recurring pattern

But Abraha’s story is not unique.

Barnaba Timothous, who fled to Egypt three years earlier, had also been pressed to testify against Christian colleagues. Doing student campus ministry, he was accused of taking foreign money.

“I was told that if I would cooperate nothing would happen to me,” he told WWM. “But if not, nothing would protect me from them.”

Some people criticized him for his decision to leave. He did so quickly, taking one bag and telling no one in his family. And though he stated he was not personally involved in ministry among Muslims, he refused to betray those he knew.

“I will not be involved in issues that hurt the body of Christ and bring suffering to innocent people, just because they follow Christ as savior,” he said.

“The Islamic government of Sudan is persecuting the leaders of churches and ministries. And now our students no longer trust each other, fearful someone might report them.”

Timothous, who has since been joined by his mother and sister, is now working amongst students at several university campuses in Egypt.

WWM has spoken with other Christian leaders who tell similar stories.

Excuse for crackdown

”The [Sudan] government wants sharia and is cracking down on the church,” said Kamal Fahmy, head of the religious freedom advocacy group Set My People Free.

He recalled President Omar al-Bashir’s threat, on the eve of South Sudan independence in 2011, to make Sudan a fully Islamic state, the removal of foreign NGOs thereafter, and the expulsion of South Sudanese in 2013.

“Authorities felt Pastors Hassan and Kuwa were shaming them, bringing a bad report,” Fahmy told WWM.

“In the rebel areas the church is doing humanitarian work and is not involved in the conflict, but it does expose the atrocities the Sudanese government is committing.

“It will find any excuse to accuse them.”

Pastors have been arrested, churches have been destroyed, and land has been confiscated, according to the US State Department’s 2015 Report on International Religious Freedom.

And on 6 Oct the European Parliament passed a resolution against Sudan, specifically naming the four detainees.

Noting the EU partnership with Sudan toward ‘better migration management’, the resolution ‘reaffirms that freedom of religion, conscience or belief is a universal human right that needs to be protected everywhere and for everyone … especially in the case of apostasy.’

But in January 2015, Sudan actually expanded its apostasy laws to include criticism of the Prophet Mohammad’s wives or early companions.

Fahmy, who recently penned an open letter to the UN with the Forum for Religious Freedom-Europe, links an oppressive religious climate to development issues, which he says “assaults the core of human nature”.

“Apostasy laws … have negative social and political consequences everywhere they are in force,” he wrote. “They create instability and inspire violence.”

“Without freedom to change beliefs there is no religious freedom,’” he told WWM. “Going to paradise is not compulsory.”