COUNTRY PROFILE SUDAN
SELECTED INCIDENTS DECEMBER 2022 The Sudanese Church of Christ’s Dawka Church in Gedaref State was burned down. Local media blamed the blaze on a soldier from the Sudanese Armed Forces. Church leaders filed a case against the man. 223 APRIL 2023 The start of the civil war triggered attacks against prominent churches in the Khartoum area. St. Girgis’s Coptic Orthodox Church in Old Omdurman was targeted during a Sunday service. Three worshipers and a guard were shot at, and the local bishop was seriously injured. Military forces occupied the Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Cathedral, reportedly destroying buildings and forcibly expelling the local bishop and other clergy. A week later, they stormed All Saints’ Episcopal Cathedral in Khartoum. Many other churches in the capital were seized on the first day of the conflict. That same day, bombers attacked the Catholic Bishop’s House in El Obeid. The bishop took refuge in the neighboring cathedral. 224 NOVEMBER 2023 A Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Omdurman was shelled three times, causing serious damage. Everything inside was destroyed. Several people in the church compound at the time were unharmed. 225 JANUARY 2024 Bishop Yunan Tombe of El Obeid was stopped just outside the city center by extremists. Calling him an infidel, they seized his pectoral cross and episcopal ring. 226
The civil war that broke out on April 15 th , 2023 unleashed a wave of violence and displacement affecting all communities across Sudan. Several significant churches were among religious buildings targeted in the war’s opening weeks. 210 Many churches in the Khartoum area and elsewhere were immediately seized by military forces. 211 By mid-May, this included the Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox Cathedral and All Saints’ Episcopal Cathedral, both in Khartoum. 212 In the following months, up to165 churches were closed and others destroyed. 213 By early 2024, human rights observers began describing Sudan’s internal displacement crisis as “the highest in the world” 214 – with the UN stating record levels of children were suffering malnutrition due to food scarcity. 215 By that time, the Church, which had been five percent of the population (2.4 million) before the conflict, was “shrinking away.” 216 While many Christians migrated to their ancestral homelands in South Sudan, Church sources reported that the faithful made up the majority of the 750,000 or more people who took refuge in the Nuba Mountains. 217 In the two years leading up to the civil war, the regime that came to power in a coup in October 2021 began reversing a process towards “liberalization and religious freedom” 218 undertaken by the transitional government. The transitional government (2019-21) had restored Christmas Day as a public holiday, 219 issued an apology for the country’s long record of persecution against Christians 220 and abolished the death penalty for apostasy offenses. 221 All this changed after the coup when reports began to emerge of Christians being arrested in alleged breach of anti-apostasy laws. 222
34 Persecuted and Forgotten?
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