Sudan church persecuted

THE HEAD of the Sudanese bishops' conference has accused his country's government of violating the rights of the Catholic Church in southern Sudan. Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir Wako of Khartoum said during a recent visit to West Germany that government troops regularly conduct unlawful searches of church property and interfere with the free exercise of Christian faith.
The archbishop was especially critical of the government's attempt to impose the Shariah, the Islamic legal code, on the entire Sudanese population. He said imposing Islamic law on Sudan's 3.1 million Christians was unacceptable.
Most of Sudan's Christians live in the south, with animists. They are engaged in a civil war with the mainly Arab, Moslem north. Sudanese rebels demand eradication of Islamic law and more equitable division of political power between the two regions. Currently more than 500,000 refugees — mostly Christians who fled the civil war in the south — live in two camps on the outskirts of Khartoum.
Archbishop Wako said the Church is doing its best to help the camp dwellers, but assistance from church and international relief organisations is hampered by provincial governors who want to control distribution. The governors are supported by the government, which claims relief supplies are being diverted to the rebels.
The archbishop said he wrote to the Sudanese president last summer protesting the Shariah and the lifting of the 1962 missions law guaranteeing freedom of worship. However, he said, the situation has not changed. THE St Lucia government's proposals to introduce casino gambling to the small Caribbean island have met with stiff opposition from the Catholic Church and demands for more time for the island's inhabitants to consider the move.
Mgr Patrick Anthony, Vicar General of the Church in St Lucia which ministers to 90 per cent of the island's population, has demanded that Prime Minister John Compton's government consult the Church before granting licences to run casinos to local and overseas hotels.
He also accused the government of censorship because of the alleged withdrawal from government radio of a Church-sponsored advert exhorting the populatiuon to "avoid signing any agreement to permit the establishment of casinos in St Lucia without