Sudan's coup threatens church role

by Julian Summers CHURCH leaders and zhristians in Sudan are increasingly fearful of a hostile political climate in the country following threats to the clergy and official denunciations of the church's role in the long running civil war, according to a CAFOD project officer who has just returned from Khartoum.
In the wake of the failed coup attempt against the military government of General Omar Hassan al Bashir on April 23 and the subsequent execution of 28 of those allegedly involved, church leaders fear a return to the bleak days of 1962. It was then that former President Numeiri's Missionary Societies Act led to the expulsion of foreign church personnel, the seizure of property and the verbal and physical abuse of indigenous clergy in what became a wave of anti-christian persecution throughout predominantly Moslem Sudan.
In February this year, Archbishop Wako Zubier of Sudan was taunted by a violent mob while on a working visit to the town of Dongolla in northern Sudan. After unsuccesfully demanding an immediate meeting with the archbishop, the group turned with violence on christian visitors and priests at a nearby cultural centre. Police were called to disperse the crowd, but no charges were brought.
The incident is indicative of a growing resentment against the church, which is seen as sympathetic to the non-Arab southerners of the Sudan People's Liberation Army, currently engaged in a long and bitter war of insurrection against the Moslem dominated north of the country.
At a "peace conference" held in the Kordofan regional capital of El Obeid, delegates were reported in Sudan's one daily newspaper as stating that "the biggest obstacle to peace in Sudan is the church" and, in a veiled reference to the christian community, that "Sudan must guard itself against the activities of crusaders and Zionists".
A long statement issued at the end of the officially sponsored conference dwelt on the position of the church in Sudan rather than as expected on specific proposals for peace in the south, and was seen by many christians as questioning their loyalty to the state.
At the same time, all expatriate priests and nuns in four parishes within El Obeid diocese were expelled. The reason given by the local army commander was that these parishes all fall within the military operational area.