The National Islamic Front is employing murder, rape, and torture to
eradicate Christianity from Sudan. Christian villages are burned to the
ground and raided. Christian men are killed. Christian women are enslaved
and raped. Christian children are sold into slavery. Priests are tortured,
imprisoned, and even crucified. Since 1983, more than one million Sudanese
Christians have been killed.
Located in northern Africa, between Egypt and Ethiopia, Sudan is geographically
Africa's largest country. Sudan's cultural civil war has pitted the northern
militant Arab-Muslims against southern Sudanese, 75 percent of whom consider
themselves Christians. Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, is under the rule
of an Islamic fundamentalist government, which has reinstated Islamic law
calling for the conversion of all Sudanese to the Islamic faith.
Paul Liben explains that this particular war is about two cultures that
are radically incompatible: fundamentalist Islam and orthodox Christianity.
He notes, "The former is willing to stop at nothing to realize its dream
of an entire Sudan brought under the hegemony of a literally applied shari'a
(fundamental Islamic law). The latter, meanwhile, proclaims death as preferable
to conversion to Islam in any of its forms, which it sees as betrayal of
Christ" (First Things, August/September 1995).
The choice for Sudan's Christians: accept Islam as your faith or face
severe retribution. The government of Sudan is armed and funded by China,
Iran, and Iraq and has declared war against the Christian south in Sudan.
Jubilee Campaign, a Christian human rights organization, has noted "mounting
evidence of the crucifixion of the male populations of entire villages."
In 1992, when the Vatican protested, the Sudanese government responded,
"The Catholic Church has become the enemy of the Sudanese government. We
know how to deal with it." According to Vatican Radio, four Catholics were
subsequently arrested, flogged one hundred times, and then crucified. ("Murder
in the Sudan," Paul Liben, First Things, August/September 1995.)
Vigilante and Freedom House sponsored a fact-finding team that documented
government-sponsored kidnapping of Christian children in Sudan's campaign
of cultural cleansing. Nina Shea writes, "Forced to give up their religion,
these children are prepared for use as cannon fodder in Sudan's lengthy
civil war." The children are snatched from public places by government
agents and detained in high-security camps where they are given new Arabic
names, indoctrinated in Islam, and forced to undergo military-style training.
(In the Lion's Den, Nina Shea, 1997.)
Sudan has reinstated chattel slavery. According to Christian Solidarity
International, the Sudanese government regularly raids African communities
for slaves and cattle. The children and young women are taken to be sold
as slaves, forced to provide domestic and agricultural labor. The young
women and girls are forced into concubinage. The average price is between
five and ten cows apiece for these slaves, who then receive only minimal
sustenance.
Slaves are even used as "blood banks." After major battles, they are forced
to give blood to wounded Sudanese soldiers. (Christian Solidarity International
Backgrounder: Mission to Sudan)
The resistance of Sudanese Christians to Islam makes the Islamic fundamentalist
government in Sudan more determined to crush them. As a result, some of
the world's worst human rights abuses continue to occur in the Sudan. Horrors
continue to be documented by the United Nations Human Rights Commission,
whose special investigator, Gaspar Biro, confirmed not only the selling
of women and children into slavery, but also the "crucifixion of children
as young as seven" (Liben, First Things).
A Sudanese Christian pastor, in February 1993, asked, "Why doesn't the
Christian community in the rest of the world raise [its] voice on our behalf?
Why are we let alone? Why are we dying like this? Many, many people are
dying in southern Sudan but the world pretends it doesn't know." We have
a duty to respond to the Sudanese pastor and his people because we are
Americans and we believe in freedom. Those of us who are Christians also
have a duty to stop the silence about the persecution of our brothers and
sisters in Christ -- "If one part suffers, every part suffers with it"
(I Corinthians 13:26).
Source : http://www.frc.org/, 1997
