Sudan: Christian man killed by RSF militia. Baraka Parish church at Hajj Yusuf near Khartoum set on fire

CHRISTIANS in Sudan fear they are being increasingly targeted. “There are radical Muslims among RSF,” the pastor said in an online post. “I met some of them in Khartoum and Medani who badly harassed me when they learned that I was a pastor.” In Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, Sudan was ranked No. 8, up from No. 10 the previous year. The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5% of the total population of more than 43 million. Read more.

From Morning Star News
By Morning Star News
Dated Friday, 19 January 2024 - here is a copy in full:

Christian man killed by militants in Sudan; church set on fire

Baraka Parish church at Hajj Yusuf, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Sudan, February 10, 2013. | Reuters/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

JUBA, South Sudan — A Sudanese Christian 85 miles southeast of Khartoum has succumbed to his injuries after militants from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) assaulted him, sources said.

Personnel from the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 15, severely assaulted Karbino Bla in Wad Medani, capital of Al Jazirah state on Jan. 1, following the militants’ takeover of the city on Dec. 18. The motives for the assault were unclear.

Bla, a member of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC), died on Jan. 5 as a result of the injuries, area sources said. He is survived by his wife and an infant daughter.

“This a great lost to the Evangelical church in Medani,” a relative said.

Rights organizations and area residents report the RSF has killed civilians, raped women and girls and looted homes and shops since taking control of the state in December.

Last Friday, Muslim extremists from the RSF set a church building on fire in Wad Medani, said area sources, including a SPEC pastor. The blaze destroyed Bibles, hymnbooks, important documents and chairs in the building, he said.

Christians in Sudan fear they are being increasingly targeted, the pastor said.

“There are radical Muslims among RSF,” the pastor said in an online post. “I met some of them in Khartoum and Medani who badly harassed me when they learned that I was a pastor.”

In Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, Sudan was ranked No. 8, up from No. 10 the previous year.

Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in the 2021 World Watch List.

Fighting between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, leaving more than 12,000 people dead and displacing an estimated 5.8 million others.

Christian sites have been targeted since the conflict began.

The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition in April, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.

Burhan sought to place the RSF — a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels — under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years. The conflict burst into military fighting on April 15.

Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.

Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021.

After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government managed to undo some Sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.

With the Oct. 25, 2021 coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law. Abdalla Hamdok, who had led a transitional government as prime minister starting in September 2019, was detained under house arrest for nearly a month before he was released and reinstated in a tenuous power-sharing agreement in November 2021.

Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “deep state” from Bashir’s regime — the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the Oct. 25, 2021 coup.

Persecution of Christians by non-state actors continued before and after the coup.

The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.

In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.

The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5% of the total population of more than 43 million.

Morning Star News is the only independent news service focusing exclusively on the persecution of Christians. The nonprofit's mission is to provide complete, reliable, even-handed news in order to empower those in the free world to help persecuted Christians, and to encourage persecuted Christians by informing them that they are not alone in their suffering.

View original: https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-man-killed-by-militants-in-sudan-church-set-on-fire.html

Related

Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) building in ruins after shelling on Wednesday (Nov. 1, 2023) in Omdurman, Sudan. 

(Morning Star News)

Morning Star News - November 6, 2023

Christian Buildings Targeted in Military Conflict in Sudan

Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) structure in Omdurman left in ruins.

If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit https://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.  

Full story: https://morningstarnews.org/2023/11/christian-buildings-targeted-in-military-conflict-in-sudan/

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Sudan Watch - January 14, 2024

Sudan: Unidentified arsonists raze the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Wad Madani, Aj Jazirah State

According to this very sad report, unidentified arsonists razed the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Wad Madani, Aj Jazirah State, Sudan. The fire, based on the information gathered, was deliberate and aimed to destroy the Christian community’s religious facilities and obliterate the church’s history, which spans over a century.

Full story: https://sudanwatch.blogspot.com/2024/01/sudan-unidentified-arsonists-raze.html

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UN relief chief Martin Griffiths releases $10m USD to aid 500,000 people in South Sudan fleeing Sudan war

UN OCHA said the fund would be used to build shelters, offer cash assistance, build water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, and support onward transportation for new arrivals at overcrowded transit sites. 

 

Read more from China View Xinhuanet

By Xinhua Editor: Huaxia

Dated Tuesday, 16 January 2024; 03:45 - here is a copy in full:

UN relief chief releases fund to aid Sudanese refugees in South Sudan

UNITED NATIONS, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- The UN humanitarian chief released an emergency 10 million U.S. dollars on Monday to aid about 500,000 people in South Sudan fleeing the Sudan war.

UN Undersecretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths allocated the fund from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"As of today (Monday), about 500,000 people have crossed into South Sudan since mid-April, when Sudan's war started," OCHA said. "In just the past month, more than 60,000 people have arrived in South Sudan, following the outbreak of clashes in and around Wad Medani, Sudan's second-largest city."

The office said thousands more people are expected to arrive in South Sudan over the next six months.

OCHA said the fund would be used to build shelters, offer cash assistance, build water, sanitation and hygiene facilities, and support onward transportation for new arrivals at overcrowded transit sites. 

View original: http://www.chinaview.cn/20240116/963c578e32234e2e81bfb21e4db1af2b/c.html

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Sudan: UN officials say about 25 million persons across Sudan will need humanitarian aid in 2024

More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in and around the state capital, Wad Medani, long a place of refuge for those uprooted by clashes elsewhere. Ongoing mass displacement could also fuel the rapid spread of a cholera outbreak in the state, with more than 1,800 suspected cases reported there so far.

Nearly 25 million people across Sudan will need humanitarian assistance in 2024, “the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach,” he [UN's Griffiths] said Thursday. Deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt. Read more.

From Asharq Al-Awsat English
By Ali Barada Washington
Dated Saturday, 06 January 2024; 1445 AH - here is a copy in full:

UN Relief Coordinator Calls for Immediate Action to Stop War in Sudan

People displaced by the ongoing conflict in Sudan between the army and paramilitaries, queue to receive aid from a charity organisation in Gedaref on December 30, 2023. (Photo by AFP)

UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has called on the international community, especially those whom he said have “influence” on the parties to the conflict in Sudan, to take “decisive and immediate” action to stop the fighting and safeguard humanitarian operations.

Last April, clashes erupted between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) led by Abdulfattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces headed by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo following weeks of tension.

Griffiths said in a statement published by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Action (OCHA) that nearly nine months of war have tipped Sudan into a downward spiral that only grows more ruinous by the day.

He noted that as the “conflict spreads, human suffering is deepening, humanitarian access is shrinking, and hope is dwindling.”

Nearly 25 million people across Sudan will need humanitarian assistance in 2024, “the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach,” he said Thursday.

- Serious threat 

He said that hostilities reached the “country’s breadbasket” in al-Jazirah State, putting more of the population “at stake.”

More than 500,000 people have fled fighting in and around the state capital, Wad Medani, long a place of refuge for those uprooted by clashes elsewhere.

Ongoing mass displacement could also fuel the rapid spread of a cholera outbreak in the state, with more than 1,800 suspected cases reported there so far.

“The same horrific abuses that have defined this war in other hotspots – Khartoum, Darfur, and Kordofan – are now being reported in Wad Medani.”

Accounts of widespread human rights violations, including sexual violence, “remind us that the parties to this conflict are still failing to uphold their commitments to protect civilians.”

Given Wad Medani’s significance as a hub for relief operations, the fighting there – and looting of humanitarian warehouses and supplies – “is a body blow to our efforts to deliver food, water, health care, and other critical aid,” Griffiths pointed out.

- Regional stability

Top UN officials reported that about 25 million persons across Sudan will need humanitarian aid in 2024. However, the intensified hostilities make it more difficult for them to reach the aid.

Deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt. The cross-border aid operation from Chad continues to serve as a lifeline for people in Darfur, and efforts to deliver elsewhere are increasingly under threat.

Griffiths also warned that the escalating violence in Sudan is also imperiling regional stability.

The war has unleashed the world’s largest displacement crisis, uprooting the lives of more than 7 million people, some 1.4 million of whom have crossed into neighboring countries that already host large refugee populations.

View original: 

https://english.aawsat.com/arab-world/4772561-un-relief-coordinator-calls-immediate-action-stop-war-sudan

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Thousands fled Sudan to safety in S. Sudan, scenes at Joda border chaotic with arrivals from Madani, Sudan

As we enter #Christmas weekend yet again thousands are fleeing #SudanConflict to seek safety in 🇸🇸
The scenes at Joda border are chaotic with arrivals from #Madani
Humanitarian partners again working against & around the clock
Only solution: the fighting must stop now pic.twitter.com/0ECKUIdvef

— Marie-Helene Verney (@MarieHVerney) December 22, 2023

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Sudan: Survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell. There’s nobody in El Geneina.

“A country of 46 million people is heading rapidly towards collapse, with very little attention from the outside world,” says Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “While acknowledging other crises elsewhere in the world right now, the scale of this crisis is unmatched, and it will have significant ramifications for the region and beyond.”

Read more from The Guardian, UK

By FRED HARTER
Supported by the guardian.org
Dated Saturday, 30 December 2023; 13.04 GMT UK - here  is a copy in full:

‘They told us – you are slaves’: survivors give harrowing testimony of Darfur’s year of hell

With the war in Sudan poised to escalate and the humanitarian crisis growing, traumatised survivors of a blood-drenched summer in West Darfur tell of their ordeal

There’s nobody in El Geneina. It’s ghostly quiet. It’s horrific to see areas once full of life now totally empty -Aid worker

We could hear gunfire for two months but our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict and not for us to intervene -Soldier at Ardamata garrison

A group in Wad Madani, in south-eastern Sudan, rally in support of Sudan's army in December, as the war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues and refugees flee Darfur in western Sudan. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Gamar al-Deen was visiting a friend when gunmen poured into his neighbourhood on 27 April 2023. “I came back to find they were all dead,” he says. “My mother, my father, uncles, brothers, sisters. I wanted to die myself in that moment.”

Deen, a teacher, lost a dozen members of his family that day. Several of his neighbours were killed too. At his friend’s during the carnage, he saw a group of fighters strip a woman naked and then rape her in the street. “They told us, ‘This area belongs to us, not you, you are slaves,’” he says.

The attack was one of many by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary organisation, and allied Arab militiamen in El Geneina, capital of Sudan’s West Darfur region, between mid-April and mid-June. Their fighters carried out almost daily raids against areas of the city populated by the Masalit, an African ethnic group, according to former residents.

Gamar al-Deen, a teacher in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, lost a dozen family members on 27 April 2023 in an attack carried out by RSF paramilitaries

The attacks happened as the world’s attention was focused on fighting 700 miles away in the capital, Khartoum, as foreign governments launched frantic airlifts to evacuate their citizens. The scale of the tragedy unfolding in Darfur, a region ravaged by 20 years of genocidal violence, would only begin to emerge weeks later.

Sometimes the attacks were targeted, as the militiamen hunted down educated Masalits on kill lists. Mostly they were not. Masalit men and boys were accused of being fighters and summarily shot. Women and girls were killed. Women were raped near corpses.

Mahmoud Adam, a former interpreter with the African Union’s Darfur peacekeeping force, which left at the end of 2020, lived close to an RSF base in the city. He said Arab militia would arrive most mornings on horses and motorbikes before heading out to launch attacks on Masalit neighbours.

“For two months, this was their routine,” says Adam. “I would hear them talking about the number of people they had killed at the end of each day.”

The attacks started on 24 April, according to residents, just over a week after nationwide fighting erupted between the Sudanese military and the RSF. They culminated in mid-June, after the killing of the governor of West Darfur, a Masalit, which prompted a panicked evacuation of El Geneina’s Masalit residents to neighbouring Chad and the outlying district of Ardamata, home to a large military base.

Thousands of fleeing civilians made easy pickings for RSF fighters and Arab militia, who fired at the crowds and at passing vehicles, according to survivors. One witness described “a scene from hell” with dozens of bodies along the roadside and washed up on the banks of a nearby river, some with their hands tied.

The hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the Chadian town of Adré received more than 850 patients with bullet, stab and shrapnel wounds between 14 and 17 June.

Sexual violence was a feature of the bloodshed with gunmen rounding up and raping women and girls.

El Geneina once had a mixed population of more than half a million. Today, its Masalit neighbourhoods are deserted. “There’s nobody there, it’s ghostly quiet,” says an aid worker who visited recently. “It is horrific to see areas that used to be bustling, full of life, now totally empty.”

Destruction in El Geneina’s marketplace after fighting between the Sudanese army and the RSF on 29 April 2023

The cycle of violence would repeat itself in early November after the RSF captured the military base in Ardamata, a few miles from El Geneina. The garrison fell amid days of killings and looting. Last month, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the UN’s genocide prevention adviser, warned that Darfur risked becoming a “forgotten crisis”.

Half a million people now live in hastily assembled camps in Chad. Cash-strapped aid agencies are struggling to respond: the refugees do not have enough mosquito nets, blankets or water. About 175,000 are living in grass huts they weaved themselves.

A Sudanese refugee builds a grass hut in the border town of Adré, eastern Chad, where about 175,000 displaced people live in similar makeshift huts

“Nearly every person who crossed the border has some sort of trauma,” says Eric Kwakya, a psychologist with the International Rescue Committee. “They have seen terrible things.”

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, was drinking coffee in an El Geneina marketplace when RSF fighters and Arab militia first attacked on 24 April. He raced home, narrowly avoiding bullets ricocheting through the streets. He spent the next seven weeks volunteering at a clinic, collecting the wounded and dead from around the city with a team of volunteers. Bodies were wrapped in blankets and loaded on to donkey carts.

Sherif al-Deen, a social worker, risked his life to help collect the wounded and dead

Sherif saw a group of Arab fighters fire on a crowd with a machine gun, killing eight. Several of his colleagues were shot. “It was very dangerous work, but I had to do it for my people,” he says.

Burying the dead carried risks. To avoid being targeted by snipers, mourners held clandestine funerals for their loved ones at night, says Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor, who attended a dozen night burials between April and June.

At one funeral, the mourners came under fire and had to abandon the bodies beside half-dug graves. “If they see you burying the dead – if they see even the flash of a torch – they will kill you,” he says.

One of the deadliest attacks came on 12 and 13 May. At least 280 people were killed over those two days, according to the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union.

Sara Mohamed* described gunmen looting her home on 12 May. During the attack, they shot her neighbour’s 10-year-old daughter. “I rushed to hold her, to stop the bleeding, but she died in my arms,” she says.

Another young girl was wounded, and a woman was shot through the stomach. When the militia returned a few hours later, they shot Mohamed’s father and burned down her home.

The massacre unfolded in stages over several weeks. Throughout the bloodshed, the Sudanese garrison at Ardamata’s military base did not venture beyond its blast walls. “We could hear gunfire for two months,” says one soldier. “But our commanders told us it was a tribal conflict, that it was not for us to intervene.”

People trying to escape the violence in West Darfur cross the border into Adré, Chad, in August 2023

Mohamed and another woman interviewed by the Guardian were raped during the violence. Mohamed was gang-raped at knifepoint. The second woman was abducted off the street by a group of men, who covered her head and bundled her into a car. It was a targeted attack. “They called me by my name,” she says. “They said, ‘We know you are writing about the RSF on Facebook.’” Eventually she was driven back to El Geneina and dumped outside a clinic, hands still tied behind her back.

‘If they see you burying the dead they will kill you’: Abdulmonim Adam, a lawyer and human rights monitor who attended a dozen secret night-time burials

That was not the end of her ordeal. A few days later, as she fled to Chad, her vehicle was stopped by a group of armed Arab villagers. They shot the car’s two male occupants. Then two of the villagers took turns raping her and the other female passenger, a 13-year-old girl, beneath a tree.

One of the attackers was middle-aged; the other looked about 18. “I heard the man talking about how happy he was to rape such a young girl,” she says.

She still receives threatening social media messages from unidentified men in El Geneina. A recent voice note sent on WhatsApp said: “We will find you in Chad. You are a slut. Whenever you come back to Sudan, we will do what we want with you.”

Six months on, Sudan’s war is poised to escalate. Having captured most of Darfur, the RSF appears to be cementing its grip over Khartoum. This month, the paramilitaries took Wad Madani, the country’s second city, which had been hosting 500,000 refugees from Khartoum and serving as a logistics hub for aid agencies.

Close to 7 million people have been uprooted across Sudan, the world’s biggest displacement crisis. More than half the population need aid, and 3.5 million children under five are malnourished.

“A country of 46 million people is heading rapidly towards collapse, with very little attention from the outside world,” says Toby Harward, the UN’s deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan. “While acknowledging other crises elsewhere in the world right now, the scale of this crisis is unmatched, and it will have significant ramifications for the region and beyond.”

Sudanese refugees wait for UN World Food Programme food distribution in Adré

The international response to the crisis in Darfur has been “completely absent”, says Cameron Hudson, a former White House official. Hudson is critical of US-led attempts to mediate an “elite deal” between the RSF and the Sudanese military. “The US is worried the RSF won’t keep showing up if it holds them responsible for their atrocities and introduces sanctions,” he says. “They are holding the US government hostage.”

Meanwhile, among the Sudanese refugees camping in the desert in Chad, unease is growing. “Even here, I do not feel safe,” says Gamar al-Deen, the teacher.

* Name has been changed to protect identity

Rape, murder, looting: massacre in Ardamata is the latest chapter in Darfur’s horror story Read more

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

View original: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/dec/30/survivors-give-harrowing-testimony-of-darfur-sudan-year-of-hell

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