Sudan’s Aerial Bombing Aims at Churches in Nuba Mountains

After Khartoum denied that it had bombed civilians earlier this month, Sudanese aerial strikes last week were aimed at church buildings and schools in Kauda, South Kordofan state, a humanitarian aid worker said.

Antonov airplanes dropped bombs on Thursday and Friday (March 22 and 23), destroying some houses and cattle near the church buildings and schools but causing no casualties, he said.

Humanitarian agencies consider the Islamic government’s targeting of civilians in the Nuba Mountains, which has a large Christian population, an “ethnic cleansing” against non-Arab peoples in the multi-ethnic state, with the added incentive of ridding the area of Christians, he said.

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Sudanese Bishops warn of a return to Civil War

Sudan's Catholic bishops have issued a formal warning about the threat of a return to full-scale civil war and have appealed for urgent food and medicine, stating that thousands of people are being terrorised by aerial bombardment.

Referring to spreading violence in different regions in central and eastern Sudan, and newly created South Sudan, the bishops' statement urges the international community to intervene to stop the fighting.

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A letter to President Obama: Help Free Blind Boy's Mother and Eradicate Slavery in Sudan

Christian Solidarity International (CSI) urged President Obama to address the persistence of slavery in Northern Sudan. The appeal – conveyed in a letter from CSI-USA's CEO, Dr. John Eibner – follows testimony given to Congress by a former Southern Sudanese slave, Ker Aleu Deng, on October 4.

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Ending Arab slavery

My life has been profoundly changed by a blind teenage boy. His name is Ker Deng. He belongs to the Dinka tribe in southern Sudan.

Arab raiders from northern Sudan enslaved Ker in his infancy. His mother later told him how they were captured and forced to leave their home in southern Sudan. Many of their relatives and neighbors, especially men, were killed. Homes were burned. Cows and goats were stolen. Ker and his mother were tied to a camel and taken to the north as booty of war.

Ker will always be haunted by the vivid memories of abuse meted out by his sadistic master: frequent beatings and death threats, racial abuse, forced conversion to Islam and, of course, ultimate denial of his humanity.

His meals consisted mostly of horse food. At night, he slept with the goats.

His mother faced indescribable abuse as their master’s sex slave. I’ve spoken to dozens of freed Sudanese slaves, who have told me that rape and beatings are frequent, and that most women’s genitals are mutilated.

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Christians face increasing hostility in North Sudan

Constructing worship buildings more difficult since secession of South Sudan

Emboldened by government calls for a Sudan based on Islamic law since the secession of South Sudan, Muslims long opposed to a church near Khartoum have attacked Christians trying to finish constructing their building, sources said.

The Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) congregation in Omdurman West, across the Nile River from Khartoum, has continued to meet for Sunday worship in a building without a roof in spite of opposition from area Muslims and local authorities, the sources told Compass. Claiming that Christianity was no longer an accepted religion in the country, Muslims in the Hay al Sawra, Block 29 area of Omdurman West on Aug. 5 attacked SCOC members who were constructing the church building, the sources said.

“We do not want any presence of churches in our area,” shouted members of the mob as they threw stones at the Christians, the sources said.

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Shar'ia advances as Sudan's constitution is rewritten

WORTHYNEWS

Sudanese leader Omer Hassan Al-Bashir is rewriting his country's constitution in order to implement shar'ia (Islamic) law.

"This new law is going to affect a significant number of Christians who live in places like Khartoum," said Jonathan Rach, International Christian Concern's North Africa specialist. "There are still a significant number of Christians in Sudan ... If Al-Bashir introduces this shar'ia law and if he's going to go ahead and adopt an entirely Islamic constitution, Christians and other non-Muslims who live in Sudan will be treated like second-class citizens; they will be dhimmis and they will not have full rights in the freedom of religion."

Racho said Al-Bashir's move towards shar'ia shows that the government of Sudan hasn't learned anything from its recent loss of the South.

"The government of Sudan should realize that the reason the South seceded ... was because of the shar'ia law, and now they're repeating the same mistake."

"Bashir has always embraced shar'ia as good government," said Global Response Network Founder and President Tom Zurowski. "Shar'ia has been the very ethos of Bashir and the North for a long, long time. People on the ground in the South have known this right along (that) the Islamization of Sudan has been the goal of Bashir's government for years."

Zurowski said al-Bashir is now facing the realities of having a new Christian neighbor while having to deal with its other African Islamic countries.

"If Bashir wants the backing of neighboring Arab nations, he must fully embrace shar'ia, or be seen as a weak leader among other Arab countries," he said. "His ego and arrogance will not allow for that."

South Sudan's independence took a major portion of Sudan's oil revenues, so Al-Bashir is now facing a new economic reality. The Sudan Tribune reported Al-Bashir told government officials that spending reductions are now a priority so as to relieve mounting economic pressures, but Racho is asking the international community to put even more pressure on Sudan to ensure safety for its Christians.

"We (ICC) want the international community to put pressure on Sudan," he said. "One of the important things about Sudan is its reliance on the international community. We also want the American Christian community to know that the secession of the South doesn't end the plight of Christians, so they should continue to advocate on behalf of the Christians in Sudan."

Khartoum cancels Sudanese nationality of southerners

Sudan's parliament passed a law on Wednesday cancelling the Sudanese nationality of southerners, four days after their homeland declared independence from the north, state media reported.

"All the southerners are going to lose their Sudanese nationality directly" because of the amendments to a law approved by parliament, MP Ismail al-Haj Musa told AFP, confirming a report on the official SUNA news agency.

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Jihad In Sudan Redux

On July 9, the mostly Christian South Sudan will legally and officially separate from the Muslim north and become a new, independent and free country. Fearing loss of its iron clad grip of other non-Arab regions in the north, whose people likely envy the freedoms won by the South, Arab/Islamist leaders in Khartoum have launched a military assault on the Nuba Mountains, a mixed Christian, animist and Muslim region. Reports from the area are gruesomely reminiscent of the decades-long assault Khartoum waged on the South. These include forced conversions to Islam, mass displacement, bombing of civilians and mass slaughter.
 
Anticipating the effects of Christians winning freedom from his rule already in December of 2010 Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is indicted by the International Criminal Court for genocide and crimes against humanity, laid out a vision for the future of his nation:
 
"If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity... Sharia (Islamic law) and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language", he told a group of supporters.

Al-Bashir made his statement as the people of Southern Sudan were preparing to vote in the referendum that secured their imminent independence. With less than a week left before South secedes, al-Bashir is determined to fulfill his promise not by changing the constitution, but through murder and ethnic cleansing.
 
After concluding a military occupation of the disputed border region of Abyei,  which resulted in the expulsion of more than 100,000 (non-Arabs, mostly from the Dinka tribe), Sudanese army and government-sponsored Arab militias attacked the African tribes of Nuba Mountains, a region situated in the Northern state of Southern Kordofan. Reports indicate indiscriminate bombings of civilians and a systematic killing of the black-skinned Nuba, which forced estimated 100,000 to abandon their homes. One report described "door to door executions of completely innocent and defenseless civilians, often by throat cutting."  Another suggested the government might be using chemical weapons. The Bishop of Nuba Mountains described the events as genocide: "Once again we are facing the nightmare of genocide of our people in a final attempt to erase our culture and society from the face of the earth." A well-respected Sudan analyst concurred.
 
Nuba embody the diversity of culture and religion that al-Bashir wants to destroy. Numbering some 1.5 million, Nuba people are Christians, Muslims and the followers of traditional faiths. It is not uncommon to find the adherents of all faiths within a single family. Comprising from more than fifty tribes and speaking an equal number of languages, the Nuba have an incredibly diverse culture.
 
Just like the Africans of the South, the Nuba have faced racial discrimination from the Arab governments and elites of the North, which led them to join Sudan's People Liberation Army (SPLA) at the beginning of the second outbreak of Sudan's Civil War (1983-2005). The government's response, especially after the Islamist regime of Al-Bashir and Hassan al-Turabi seized power in 1989, escalated into the campaign of annihilation. The Nuba people lost their lands; they were murdered, starved and enslaved.  In what some  called genocide in the name of Islam, all Nuba-Christians, animists and even Muslims-were targeted for eradication; estimated 200,000 perished.
 
In the crackdown that reach the Nuba Mountains even before the outbreak of the war, Christian clergy was murdered; churches burned, while Christian children were abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and often forced to join the Sudanese army to fight against their own people. In the current attack Christian places of worship are also being destroyed.  In January 1992, South Kordofan governor, Lt. General al-Hussein officially declared the war a "jihad." Shortly after, in 1993, the religious leaders of Southern Kordofan issued a fatwa that legalized it:
 
"The rebels in South Kordofan and Southern Sudan started their rebellion against the state and declared war against the Moslems. Their main aims are: killing the Moslems, desecrating mosques, burning and defiling the Koran, and raping Moslem women. In so doing, they are encouraged by the enemies of Islam and Moslems: these foes are the Zionists, the Christians and the arrogant people who provide them with provisions and arms. Therefore, an insurgent who was previously a Moslem is now an apostate; and a non-Moslem is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them."
 
Following this religious ruling, Sudanese soldiers and allied militias began killing Nuba imams, burning mosques and desecrating Korans. Today, the same actors praise God as they kill the innoncent.
 
To destroy the social fabric of the Nuba society the government forces and the Arab militiamen systematically raped thousands of Nuba women, including girls as young as nine. The raping took place during abductions, in military camps, and in so-called "peace camps." One victim, a 17 years-old girl named Fawzia Jibreel, told African Rights:
 
"After dark, the soldiers came and took the girls to their rooms, and raped them. I was taken and raped... When you have been taken, the soldier who has taken you will do what he wants, then he will go out of the room, you will stay, and another one will come...Every day the raping continued... It is impossible to count the men who raped me. Perhaps in a week I would have only one day of rest. Sometimes one man will take me for the whole night. Sometimes I will be raped by four or five men per day or night; they will just be changing one for another."
 
The policy of rape is being used in the Nuba Mountains once again.
 
On July 1, during Friday prayers in a mosque in Khartoum, al-Bashir said that he ordered his soldiers to continue "cleaning" South Kordofan.  As history shows all those who care about the plight of Nuba and other Africans of Sudan must take his words seriously and act to stop his religious genocide.

North Sudan: What next?

The recent declaration of independence by South Sudan from its northern neighbor is certainly a welcome event. After two civil wars (1955-1972 and 1983-2005) that took the lives of more than 2.5 million Christians and animists, secession was the only reasonable option. Of course, there are immediate challenges for South Sudan, as it seems unlikely that 7,000 UN peacekeeping troops can protect a new nation that has vast oil reserves and a population living largely in abject poverty.

But what about North Sudan’s future? One noteworthy development in the north is the aerial bombardment targeting civilians in the Nuba Mountains, which are part of the petroleum-rich province of South Kordofan that will be the main oil producing region for North Sudan, following the south’s secession. The Nuba Mountains – once a base for the Sudan People’s Liberation Army that fought against the Arab-led government in Khartoum during the second civil war – are primarily inhabited by the Nuban people, a mixed Christian and Muslim population with their own language and culture.

Indeed, as Amar Amoun (a Nuban MP in North Sudan’s opposition) says, the bombing is a deliberate tactic to depopulate the Nuba Mountains. With Nuban rebels starting to take up arms and hoping to achieve more civil rights or independence for the Nuban people, war with the central government appears likely, hence the potential for another humanitarian catastrophe as in Darfur.

Here is the heart of the issue. It’s all very well to have South Sudan secede, but the root of the problem has still not been addressed: namely, the traditional doctrines of jihad that underlie the Islamist and Arab supremacist ideology of the ruling elite in Khartoum.

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Sudan orders UN out of restive south

Sudan has ordered the official termination of the UN's north-south peacekeeping mission on July 9, the date the south will declare full independence, Khartoum’s official news agency said.

“Sudan has officially notified the United Nations of the end of the term of the United Nations Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) on July 9,” Suna said in a statement late on Saturday.

Violence in the contested border region of Abyei following the occupation on May 21 by Khartoum’s troops and tanks have raised fears the two sides could tip back into civil war.

Heavy fighting has forced thousands of people to flee southwards.

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The Jihad in Sudan enters a new phase: North Sudanese troops seize South Sudanese border town of Abiye

'It comes weeks before the South is due to become independent and follows fierce fighting between the government's Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the rebel's (sic: that should be "rebels' " - but why is AFP still calling them rebels in any case, given that within weeks they will be the lawful armed forces of an independent nation? - CM) Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA).

"The SAF have entered Abyei, there is still fighting but they have come with tanks, they are shooting and shooting", SPLA spokesman Philip Aguer said.

"Our police have been fighting but the SAF have sent many soldiers in", he said, speaking by phone from Juba, the capital of South Sudan.

The United States condemned the Abyei offensive and called on Sudan's armed forces "to immediately cease all offensive operations in Abyei and withdraw its forces from Abyei".

And if they don't?  That condemnation, and that call, had better be backed up by the wielding of a great big stick, with force and with precision.  We are confronted by Muslim North Sudan, in an act of brazen aggression, testing the non-Muslim world, to see whether it [North Sudan] can get away with murder and robbery in broad daylight against the new nation of South Sudan, as once it got away with mass murder and robbery when those South Sudanese were within its jurisdiction. It is in South Sudan, not in Libya or Afghanistan or Iraq, that the resources of non-Muslim nations such as France, Britain and the USA stand a real chance of halting and rolling back the advance of the Global Jihad.

What matters in Africa most of all is that the Ummah, or Mohammedan mob, is steadily grinding its way southward into majority-Christian and animist black Africa, killing, enslaving, corrupting, destroying good things and making bad things worse.  And that the free nations - many of the unfree are backing the ummah - should desire to see it stopped, and muster the will to assist the non-Muslim Africans to do so.

Abyei's furture is the most sensitive of a raft of issues that the two sides in Sudan are struggling to agree on before the south is recognised as an independent state in July

News of the Sudanese army breakthrough came after reports of an increase in fighting.

'Shooting broke out late Thursday as UN peacekeepers escorted 200 northern SAF troops out of the contested area, with both armies accusing each other of having started the fight.

When dealing with incidents like this, where you have one party's word against the other's, on balance it would be wisest to trust the non-Muslim South Sudanese account of events, given that their opponents are Muslims who have a demonstrated track record of lying, cheating and fighting dirty and one of whose special tricks is a sleight-of-hand by which they start a fight and then pretend that the other guy started it.

Jihad defeated in Sudan

FRONTPAGEMAGAZINE

The residents of South Sudan have voted almost unanimously in favor of secession. President Omar Bashir has said that he would react to the new country’s creation by modifying Sudan’s constitution so that Sharia is the only law of the land and Arabic the only language. The U.S. has a potential new ally in South Sudan, but the Bashir regime is now more radicalized and will try to undermine its neighbors with the help of Islamist allies.

Faith McDonnell, the Director of Religious Liberty Programs and Church Alliance for a New Sudan at the Institute on Religion and Democracy, told FrontPage that South Sudan will be a pro-Western secular democracy with religious freedom.

“South Sudan’s independence means that a people who fought against jihad and forced Islamization/Arabization have won. They have rolled back the plan to impose Sharia, they have refused to be dhimmis, at great coast,” McDonnell said.

President Bashir says that his country will now be based strictly on Sharia law, a move intended to appease the Muslim Brotherhood and other radical Islamic forces inside his country that have turned on him. His former ally, Hasan al-Turabi, was arrested shortly following the referendum after he said the government could be overthrown as has just happened in Tunisia. An estimated 300 supporters of al-Turabi protested his arrest and were dispersed by the security forces.

The internal opposition that the Bashir regime faces is forcing it to take an aggressive stance. A successful South Sudan will inspire the opposition that exists throughout the country, especially the youth who “hate the regime and want freedom and democracy,” McDonnell said. The Sudanese regime should be expected to undermine its new neighbor through the use of non-state actors and possibly direct confrontation.

Bashir has already said war would erupt if the tribes of the oil-rich Abyei Province declared they are joining the South. The province’s vote on whether to become part of the new country has been delayed because of disputes over voter eligibility and those disputes could result in fighting. The Bashir regime is also unlikely to allow the crucial province to leave. It has also warned of war if South Sudan harbors militants fighting in Darfur, setting up a possible pretext for confrontation.

South Sudan as its independence is seen as a theft of Muslim land by the West. It is not inconceivable that the Bashir regime will ally with these terrorists as it has done so in the past to undermine South Sudan and please al-Turabi and the like. In fact, an intelligence report from 2006 claimed that about 15 members of Al-Qaeda were training the regime-sponsored Janjaweed militia in Darfur.

Bashir’s Sudan will also become even closer to Iran, which is eager to extend its reach into East Africa. The Iranian regime opposed the referendum and said it would help Sudan ensure its territorial integrity. Bashir can count on Iran to help him undermine South Sudan as it stands in the way of the Islamic Revolution.

The Iranians have grown closer to Eritrea and an expanded presence in Sudan would allow Iran to threaten the Red Sea shipping lanes and the Arabian Peninsula from the west side. Egypt could also be pressured from the south. In April 2009, the Mubarak regime arrested about 50 Hezbollah operatives planning to attack an Israeli site in the country. The interrogations revealed that they planned to send other members to Sudan for training in suicide bombing and other terrorist tactics.

Sudan is also sponsoring Hamas. In January 2009, the regime admitted that a truck convoy that was bombed by the Israelis was transporting Iranian arms to Hamas. The Revolutionary Guards had been managing the supply line from Port Sudan. An opposition newspaper has reported that the Revolutionary Guards is running a factory in Khartoum that is making weapons for Hamas, the Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, and unidentified militants in Somalia. The deputy-editor of the newspaper was arrested after the story broke.

The Bashir regime may also be trying to build nuclear weapons or at least assist Iran in doing so. Since at least 1998, it has been known that an Iranian-owned company in Khartoum was acquiring nuclear technology. It is no coincidence that Ayatollah Khamenei was in Sudan when he stated in 2006 that Iran would share nuclear technology with Islamic countries. Khartoum has since officially told the IAEA that it is beginning a nuclear energy program and would build its first reactor by 2020. Agents of the regime have reportedly tried to make contact with the remnants of the A.Q. Khan network over the past year. This is made all the more dangerous by Bashir’s decision to make Sudan a state based solely on Sharia law.

The new country of South Sudan offers the West an opportunity to have an ally to counter Iran’s bloc in East Africa. It will come under attack from a Bashir regime that must not allow it to succeed and terrorists that see its creation as part of a Zionist plot against Islam. The largely Christian and African state of South Sudan will need the West’s help in defending itself against the Islamists, but how far the U.S. is willing to go to provide it remains to be seen.

10 south Sudanese killed at north border

AFP

Armed Misseriya Arab tribesmen killed 10 south Sudanese civilians and wounded 18 near the border as they were returning from the north, southern internal affairs minister Gier Chuang said Tuesday as the landmark independence vote went into a third day with large crowds again forming outside polling stations.

"A convoy of returnees coming from the north to the south were ambushed on Monday by armed Misseriya. Ten were killed and 18 were wounded," Chuang told a news conference, according to AFP.

Sudan's Bashir sees Islamic law, defends flogging

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said on Sunday that the country's north will reinforce its Islamic law after a referendum expected to grant independence to the south, in a speech in which he also defended police who were filmed flogging a woman.

"If south Sudan secedes, we will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture and ethnicity," President Omar Hassan al-Bashir told supporters at a rally in the eastern city of Gedaref.
"Sharia and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language," he said.

Southerners are now three weeks away from the scheduled start of a vote on whether to declare independence or stay part of Sudan -- a plebiscite promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of war between the Muslim north and the south where most follow traditional beliefs and Christianity.

That 2005 accord set up an interim constitution that limited Islamic sharia law to the north and recognised "the cultural and social diversity of the Sudanese people".

Bashir also defended police shown lashing a woman in a film that appeared on the video-sharing website YouTube.

"If she is lashed according to sharia law there is no investigation. Why are some people ashamed? This is sharia," he said.

The case of Sudan

Sudan presents a religiously divided / pluralistic society. It is estimated that more than 70% of the Sudan’s present population are Sunni Muslims. About 11% belong to indigenous African religions and about 19% are Christians. The Muslim population is concentrated in the north, while the Christians and the practitioners of traditional indigenous religions live in the south or in the Nuba Mountains and the Blue Nile areas in central Sudan. An exception to this spatial ordering are the long established Coptic Christians who share urban space with Muslims in the North. Growing adherence to Christianity is reported among southerners, Nuba and other groups in Sudan. Such growth could have been at the expense of the traditional indigenous religions. At least two million southern Christians have settled in northern semi-urban areas as internally displaced resulting from the civil war.

Islam and the state structures have been closely related in Sudan – even since long before the time of the Mahdiyyah of the late 19th century. The Muslim groups in Sudan made efforts to enforce an Islamic state on Sudanese society. Through their conceptualisations of an Islamic state, they have been crucial to the definition of the Sudanese political system. At present, these Muslim groups share the objective of creating an Islamic state, but they have radically different views on the strategies and the socio-economic and political structures of this state.

Since the installation of a new “islamic order” (nizam islami) under President Jaafar Nimeiri in 1983, every civil or military government has had to deal with public discussions about shari’a. In an political atmosphere ripe with allegations of heterodoxy and even apostasy shari’a as the will of God had assumed a highly legitimising function in political debates. The National Salvation Government, which has been the outcome of June 1989 military coup, has formally opted for Islam as its system of government and followed the previously existing Islamic model since its introduction in September 1983. Within this government, there is strong support for the rule by means of the Islamic shari’a laws in all aspects of public life all over the country.

Importantly, the Sudan’s Constitutional Decree No. 7 in 1993, while affirming that “Islam is the guiding religion for the overwhelming majority of the Sudanese people,” states that “revealed religions such as Christianity, or traditional religious beliefs, may be freely adopted by anyone with no coercion in regards to beliefs and no restriction on religious observances”. Although the laws recognise Sudan as a multi-religious country, in practice, the government treats Islam as the state religion. More and above, an important part of the government’s political agenda has been to act as an Islamic model-state in the region and to gain ideological influence in other African states with substantial Muslim populations.

Christians have struggled against both the Islamising effects of the Khartoum governments and the perceived Arabising policies of the north. The initiatives of the various governments both elected and military have been seen as anti-Christian. The Nimeiri regime’s introduction of shari’a for all people, not just Muslims was resented by Christians. Making Arabic the language of education even in the South was viewed as a way of both de-culturing people and cutting them off from Anglophone education. The attempts at dialogue by Hassan al-Turabi were viewed with suspicion by both Christians and Muslims and seen as a political manoeuvre. The recently completed peace accord between Khartoum and the SPLA is again viewed with some perturbation.

Shari’a versus secular state has been a central issue in the civil war from 1983 to the present and, as such, an important topic in the Naivasha peace conferences. It will remain a fundamental issue in the constitutional debate following the peace process.

With the possible exception of Afghanistan and Iran Sudan presents the most vivid example of extreme societal regulation through the application of shari’a. Legislation in every field has been inspired by this state interpreted form of shari’a. Socio-cultural groups who had for generations taken for granted that they practised shari’a in their daily dealings with land law, personal law or the law of inheritance for instance, have been confronted with this new shari’a legislation which renders their traditional legal ideas illegal and against the will of God.

The introduction of shari’a law and the implementation of the Islamic state may be regarded as decisive moves in the Arabo-Islamic “civilisational project” which aims at cultural hegemony of the central Nile Valley over the peripheral regions of the Sudan and the construction of a Sudanese Arabo-Islamic nation within the global umma of which Sudanese Islamic leaders view themselves as the avantgarde. The project of hegemony has met with varying responses throughout the Sudanese society ranging from overt rebellion to hidden resistance and strategic appropriation to wholehearted acceptance. An important aspect of these struggles about shari’a is the fact that beyond the articulate claims and counterclaims of the audible debate there is a largely hidden “debate” expressed in rituals, bodily performances and everyday social negotiations that tend to escape the attention of the scholar who concentrates on the public, articulate aspects of shari’a but which nevertheless constitutes a very real contested domain of contest.

Southern Sudan Christians say separation from the North Sudan will be "beautiful."

EPISCOPALLIFE ONLINE

But Christian leaders in the country are warning of a backlash if the 2011 referendum results in independence from the north and are urging protection for Christians in the country.

"It is possible that the government will adopt strict Islamic rule in the north under which the church will suffer severely," said the Rev. Ramadan Chan Liol, general secretary of the Sudan Council of Churches.

In the plebiscite set for Jan. 9, the oil rich south, where most people are Christians or follow local traditional religions, will determine whether to secede from the Arab- and Islamic-dominated north.

The referendum was a key requirement of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and the government of Sudan signed in 2005 to end a 21-year civil war.

During the war, churches were denied permits and land for construction. Foreign missionaries become targets of harassment by the security forces and clergy were denied visas to travel out of the country. Churches also were attacked.

"Even now, we are not finding it easy to operate there. So after secession, it will even be harder," warned Chan.

Humanitarian agencies estimate that nearly two million southerners are still living in the north, most of them in Khartoum.

Christians in the north have experienced their homes and cemeteries being demolished. Christian women have been whipped when they fail to cover their legs or faces, as required by Islamic law.

"There may be revenge on those living in the north after the vote. So measures to protect Christians are crucial," said the Rev. Tut Mai Nguoth of the Presbyterian Church in Sudan.

After the 2005 peace agreement, the government was expected to make unity attractive by ending resource imbalance, injustices and political repression, and by providing basic services. Church leaders regret that nothing was done.

"With only a few months to go, it is almost too late for the northern government to make unity attractive for the southerners to vote for unity," said Mai.

Church leaders are anxious that the north could sabotage the referendum. They fear it may fuel violence by proxy, by using southern militias as well as the Sudan Armed Forces on the borders.
Chan said violence could also be triggered if the referendum is not held on time or if its results are manipulated. Problems around the distribution of oil wealth may further fuel conflict.

"It is true that the national budget is presently supported by a high percentage from oil revenue. A large base of oil is in the south. Should the south secede, the north will have difficulty finding alternative for the support of the national budget," warns Chan.

Mai said southern Sudan people are looking beyond the vote to a new nation.

"Separation should be allowed, and maybe like Germany, the two countries could unite again in future. Maybe after 10 years," said Mai.

Catholic Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro of Juba has observed that the region's people want to form a nation in southern Sudan through the ballot. "There is a sense of the people of southern Sudan preparing for the referendum next year," he said. "If the people chose to secede ... they must be allowed to go."