No Christmas Celebration in Sudan, Muslims Burn & Demolish Churches
Posted on December 25, 2015 by creeping
The interfaith farce, via Sudan: No Chance to Celebrate Christmas in Sudan, Crackdown Continues – allAfrica.com
Few Christians in Sudan will enjoy Christmas this year as government authorities continue to crackdown on churches and parishioners alike.
Just a week before Christmas, security forces arrested Reverend Kowa Shamaal and Reverend Hassan Abdelraheem from the Sudan Church of Christ denomination at their homes in Khartoum North and Omdurman, respectively. No reason for the arrest has been given for the two church leaders who come from the Nuba Mountain region in South Kordofan State, according to news reports.
On October 17th, government officials warned the administration of the Lutheran church in Al-Thawra, Omdurman, that it will be demolished because they want to restructure the area. Without media attention except for a few Facebook posts and pleads from churchgoers, Sudanese authorities bulldozed the 33-year-old church building just three days later. “They gave us a notice that the church will be demolished after 72 hours,” said Pastor Gabriel Koko of the Omdurman Lutheran Church. Pastor Koko added that they were in the process of attempting to register the church when the demolition happened.
The Gedaref-based church is at least the third church to be set ablaze while another four churches were demolished or partially demolished since a referendum in January 2011 that led to South Sudan’s independence from the country. Just a month before the referendum, Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir told supporters in Gedaref that Sudan will not be religiously diverse if South Sudan separates and the constitution will only be guided by Shariah law. “On the eve of South Sudan’s secession in July 2011, Sudanese phone users received a text message (from the state-influenced telecommunication companies) saying that Sudan is now 97% Muslim and since then we’ve felt that we don’t have a place in this country,” said Samia Joseph*, a Nuba human rights activist.
State security’s infamous “religious security” unit have arrested dozens of Christian leaders, including five Anglican pastors in Khartoum after the Anglican Cultural Center was shut down and all the books in its spacious library were confiscated.
In 2014, three churches in Khartoum states were demolished under Bashir’s zero-tolerance policy towards religious pluralism.
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