JUBA, South Sudan – As tensions between
Sudan and South Sudan turn into military combat
on the border, predominantly Christian citizens
of southern origin trapped in Sudan fear the
Islamic government and Muslims in general will
turn on them, sources told Compass.
Officially foreigners
though many of the half million southern
Sudanese in Sudan have never lived anywhere
else, the ethnic southerners have been granted
another 30 days as of April 8 to register or
leave the country. But the government has
forbidden hundreds of ethnic southerners from
boarding planes for Juba, saying they require
documents from the southern capital in order to
leave.
“They closed all ways in
front of us in order to prevent us from travel
to our country,” said one church leader.
South Sudanese Christians
were surprised to learn that all flights and
land routes to South Sudan were closed to them
on April 9, with no information forthcoming on
when they would be allowed to leave, sources
said. The Sudanese government last week declared
it was in a state of war with South Sudan,
adding to the fears of the trapped southern
Sudanese.
Church leaders who wish to
remain in the north said they have not been
provided enough information on how to register
for legal status. And many South Sudanese fear
that registering will only help officials to
monitor their movements.
Media and mosques, church
leaders said, are increasingly sending
derogatory messages about southern Sudanese to
the general public. While the government at once
orders and prohibits them from leaving, Islamic
groups insist that ethnic southerners be
deported.
“South Sudanese citizens
must be deported immediately,” supporters of the
Al Intibaha newspaper, which has published
stories hostile to southerners, shouted at a
recent press conference in Khartoum.
Sources said many Sudanese
of ethnic southern origin complain of hearing
comments such as, “Why are you still here? Have
you not gone back yet to your country?”
In addition, on April 9
hundreds of South Sudanese displaced by war were
heading to Khartoum by bus from Renk when they
were stopped in Kosti and forced to turn back,
according to local media reports.
Bible School Threatened
The precarious legal
status of the southern Sudanese has fostered
more concrete hostilities. In Khartoum, an
Islamic mob with a bulldozer threatened to
demolish a Bible school on April 9, saying it
was located on land that should be returned to
“the land of Islam” because southern Sudanese
were no longer legal citizens.
Claiming that Gerief West
Bible School was located “in the land of Islam
of our grandfathers,” some 100 angry Muslim
extremists brandishing clubs had first
threatened to take over the school on March 30,
a school employee said. The mob threatened to
harm students and staff members, he said.
“On April 9 at 8 a.m. the
mob came again, but this time with one big
bulldozer in a clear attempt to raze the school
building, but students and school administration
protested and called the police to protect
them,” he said.
Police arrived and forced
the assailants to withdraw from the school
compound, he said, but the Islamists went away
enraged and again threatened to take the land by
force. The school, which sits on nine hectares
of land, belongs to the Sudan Presbyterian
Evangelical Church and trains church leaders
from various denominations.
The source said that
Khartoum officials seek to take church lands on
the pretext that they belong to southern
Sudanese who have lost their citizenship.
Southern Sudanese voted to secede from Sudan on
July 9, 2011. Since then, Sudanese President
Omar al-Bashir has pledged to base the new Sudan
more deeply on sharia (Islamic law).
A student at the school
said there was a prayer meeting going on when
the attackers arrived with the bulldozer.
“It was an answer to the
prayers the worshipers were offering that made
the Muslims go away without injuring a brother
or a sister,” the student said. “They wanted to
raze the building; the situation is difficult,
and you cannot imagine how bad it is.”
Encouraged by weekly
anti-Christian messages that imams preach at
Friday mosque services, many Muslims take for
granted that harassment of Christians and
Christian institutions is tolerated, sources
said.
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