Church Prayer Service Attacked in Sudan, Injuring 14 Christians

Location of Al Jazirah state, Sudan. (TUBS, Creative Commons)

NAIROBI, Kenya (Morning Star News) – Militants of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked a church prayer service in Sudan’s Al Jazirah state on Monday (Dec. 30), wounding 14 Christians, sources said.

In the town of Al Hasaheisa, the militants mounted the assault as 177 Christians of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) were praying and fasting for the end of the military strife in Sudan, said church Secretary Joseph Suliman.

The militants of the Islamist RSF, which has been battling the equally Islamist Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 2023, stormed into the worship building and beat church members on suspicion of supporting the SAF.

Mina Joseph, 18-year-old daughter of a church elder, was among those who sustained serious injuries and were in critical condition, Suliman told Morning Star News. The RSF also destroyed tables and the chairs in the worship building in the 10 a.m. assault.

The RSF, which controls the area, has prevented the church members and other Christians from leaving the area.

“They have attempted to flee the area several times, but they were prevented by RSF,” Suliman said.

The RSF has often accused civilians of supporting SAR as they attack, rape, kidnap and loot. The civil society group Al Jazirah Conference estimates RSF militants have driven all residents from 400 villages and partially emptied another 115 hamlets in the eastern part of the state alone, according to the Sudan Tribune.

The RSF reportedly began retaliating against local civilians on Oct. 20 after RSF leader Abu Aqla Kikil, a native of the area, defected to the army. The commander’s defection reportedly led to RSF violence that has displaced more than 500,000 people and killed hundreds of others.

The RSF is also accused of demographic engineering by bringing in new residents.

The conflict between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 12.2 million people within and beyond Sudan’ borders, according to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).

The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March 2023 agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the next month, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.

Burhan sought to place the RSF – a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels – under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years.

Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.

In Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian, Sudan was ranked No. 8, up from No. 10 the previous year, as attacks by non-state actors continued and religious freedom reforms at the national level were not enacted locally.

Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in the 2021 World Watch List.

Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021.

After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.

With the Oct. 25, 2021 coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law. Abdalla Hamdok, who had led a transitional government as prime minister starting in September 2019, was detained under house arrest for nearly a month before he was released and reinstated in a tenuous power-sharing agreement in November 2021.

Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “deep state” from Bashir’s regime – the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the Oct. 25, 2021 coup.

The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.

In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.

The Christian population of Sudan is estimated at 2 million, or 4.5 percent of the total population of more than 43 million. 

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