[Senate Hearing 105-280]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 105-280
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN SUDAN
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
September 25, 1997
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
43-816 CC WASHINGTON : 1998
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
JESSE HELMS, North Carolina, Chairman
RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana JOSEPH R. BIDEN, Jr., Delaware
PAUL COVERDELL, Georgia PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut
GORDON H. SMITH, Oregon JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts
CRAIG THOMAS, Wyoming CHARLES S. ROBB, Virginia
ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
JOHN ASHCROFT, Missouri DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California
BILL FRIST, Tennessee PAUL D. WELLSTONE, Minnesota
SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas
James W. Nance, Staff Director
Edwin K. Hall, Minority Staff Director
______
SUBCOMMITTEE ON AFRICAN AFFAIRS
JOHN, ASHCROFT, Missouri, Chairman
ROD GRAMS, Minnesota RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin
BILL FRIST, Tennessee PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Cox, Baroness, Deputy Speaker, The House of Lords, London,
England, and President, Christian Solidarity International,
United Kingdom................................................. 20
Prepared statement........................................... 25
Nikkel, Reverend Marc, Episcopal Mission Worker, Episcopal Church
of Sudan, Diocese of Bor, Nairobi, Kenya....................... 31
Prepared statement........................................... 34
Rone, Jemera, Counsel, Human Rights Watch, Washington, DC........ 36
Prepared statement........................................... 40
Smith, Gare, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy,
Human Rights, and Labor........................................ 5
Prepared statement........................................... 10
Appendix
Excerpt from--Behind The Red Line: Political Repression in Sudan
(Prepared by: Human Rights Watch/Africa........................ 51
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN SUDAN
----------
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1997
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on African Affairs,
Committee on Foreign Relations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:07 a.m., in
room SD-419, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John
Ashcroft, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Ashcroft and Feingold.
Senator Ashcroft. The committee will come to order.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN ASHCROFT, U.S. SENATOR FROM
MISSOURI
Senator Ashcroft. I want to welcome all of you here today,
both the witnesses, some of whom have travelled great distances
to be with us, and interested individuals.
Sudan has become a priority for me, as chairman of the
African Affairs Subcommittee, and this hearing will focus on
one of the great tragedies in Sudan.
Religious persecution is a thread that runs through the
civil conflict and social upheaval that have occurred in Sudan
over the last 4 decades. I would like to begin this morning
with a brief video segment. A number of organizations have
produced videos and this is just one of them. I do not think it
would pay for us to try to do a variety of them.
I believe ``NBC Dateline'' recently had a video that
focused exclusively on religious persecution. This item by
``Global Countdown 2000'' is a little broader in its approach.
It tells a story about the broader set of concerns in the
conflict.
I noted that CBN television had also done a video.
After we have watched the video, I will proceed to welcome
the statements of witnesses after opening statements by members
of the committee.
Because we have but one screen, I would invite anyone who
is not in a position to see the screen to move, and that
includes members of the committee.
We will take about 5 minutes for this video.
[A video was shown]
Senator Ashcroft. In a post cold war world, where
individual liberty has been advanced and democracy has taken
root around the globe, it is easy for us to forget that tyranny
still exists in many countries where millions are subjected to
cruel dictatorships and brutal military regimes.
From all the information that I have been able to gather,
Sudan is one such country. It is the largest country in Africa
in size. Sudan has had the historical potential to serve as a
bridge and stabilizing link between the Middle East and Africa.
Tragically, this country of great potential has been wracked by
a civil war inflamed by religious and ethnic hatred for much of
its history since independence in 1956.
The Subcommittee on African Affairs held a hearing on
``Sudan and Terrorism'' in May 1997, in which Sudan's
sponsorship of international terrorism was discussed. The
subject of this hearing will be the war of persecution Sudan is
waging against its own people. Sudan's support for the most
violent terrorist organizations in the world is intolerable.
But I must say that the atrocities committed by the government
in Khartoum against the Sudanese people are even more
outrageous and shocking.
Sudan's behavior draws what is all too frequently a link
between the way regimes are willing to treat their own people
and the designs and intentions they harbor for those beyond
their borders.
After overthrowing a democratically elected government in
1989, the military regime of Omar al-Bashir has turned the
civil war against southern Sudan into a jihad, or holy war. The
government attacks and persecutes all Sudanese who do not
ascribe to the government's brand of Islam--a brand of Islam
rejected by the vast majority of practicing Muslims.
More than 1.5 million civilians have died since the civil
war was reignited in 1983, with over 4 million more being
displaced by the fighting. An estimated 430,000 refugees have
fled Sudan to seek safety in neighboring countries.
Human rights organizations working in Sudan have testified
before Congress that the government uses ``aerial bombardment
and burning of villages, arbitrary arrests, torture, slavery,
especially child slavery, hostage taking, summary executions,
inciting deadly tribal conflict, the abduction and brainwashing
of children, the arrest of Christian pastors and lay church
workers, and the imprisonment of moderate Muslim religious
leaders'' to suppress dissent and form a radical Islamic State.
Being a Muslim does not guarantee freedom from religious
persecution. Only those who accept the government's particular
brand of religious extremism are spared harassment and torment.
Major Muslim political parties were banned along with all
political parties in 1989, and the Muslim sects upon which
these parties are based have been harassed by the government.
Muslim imams who criticize the government are incarcerated
and Muslim ethnic groups in the north, such as the Beja, are
attacked by government forces, their children sold into slavery
or drafted to fight in the civil war against the south. As in a
number of Arab countries, Sudanese citizens who repudiate Islam
are subject to the death penalty.
The government has armed militia groups to serve as its
proxy in terrorizing the Sudanese people. The Dinka, the
largest ethnic group in southern Sudan, have been the target of
genocidal policies characterized by the government as
``draining the sea so the fish cannot swim.'' The slaughter of
perhaps 500,000 Dinka and the scorched earth policies of
government forces have transformed the face of southern Sudan.
As Human Rights Watch Africa reports, ``The deepest
conflict is between the government and the Christian
churches.'' High officials in the Sudanese Government have
referred to Christians as the ``infidel crusaders'' and enemies
of Sudan. Christian churches are suspected by the government of
being sympathetic to the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army,
and church leaders are singled out for detention, security
surveillance, and even execution.
During this decade, Reverend Paul Agilti, an Episcopalian
clergyman, was murdered along with one of his parishioners at
his church near Bor in Eastern Equatoria. Reverend Agilti's
body was dismembered by the government soldiers. Earlier in the
decade, Pastor Haroun of the El Nugra church in the Nuba
Mountains was crucified by government troops, and churches in
Dellami, Haiban, Gorban, Umdurain, and Buram have been burned,
with the leaders and members of those churches being killed or
tortured. One 40-year-old pastor, Kamal Tutu, was thrown into
the embers of his burning church, losing his lower arms and
feet to the fire.
People of all faiths should be outraged and grieved by what
has happened in Sudan. The humanitarian catastrophe, driven by
religious and ethnic hatred in Sudan, is comparable in scope to
the tragedies of Somalia, Rwanda, and Bosnia combined.
We cannot forget that these statistics represent families,
mothers, fathers, sons, daughters--families like ours, yours
and mine, that have been shattered by war and crushed by
sorrow.
This week is an appropriate time to consider religious
persecution in Sudan. September 28 marks the beginning of a
season of prayer for the persecuted church. This time of prayer
will culminate in the United States with a day of prayer for
the persecuted church on November 16.
The Sudanese people do not seek for the United States to
remake their country in our image, but they desperately need
U.S. policies to help them throw off the yoke of military
dictatorship which is crippling their culture and society. It
is not enough to be outraged by what has happened in Sudan. The
United States must be motivated to confront and isolate the
rogue government in Khartoum responsible for inflicting untold
misery on its citizenry.
I am pleased now to call upon Senator Russell Feingold, who
is the ranking minority member of the subcommittee. Senator
Feingold.
STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, U.S. SENATOR FROM
WISCONSIN
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As I believe you
already pointed out, this is the second Africa Subcommittee
hearing we are holding on Sudan, a followup to what was a very
informative hearing on terrorism in the Sudan back in May.
Today we are considering in particular religious
persecution in Sudan, which is an equally important topic. Let
me apologize in advance if I am unable to stay for the second
panel. I very much appreciate their participation. But there is
something I must do at some point later on.
Mr. Chairman, the problems we face in Sudan today are among
the most vexing on the African Continent. During its more than
40 years of independence, Sudan has only seen about 11 years of
peace. In its place, a brutal civil war between the north and
the south rages on. This seemingly endless conflict has taken
the lives of more than 1.5 million people and, as you have
indicated, resulted in well over 2 million displaced persons or
refugees. Young children are taught early how to use a gun, and
most of them have, unfortunately, had the opportunity to do so.
Throughout this conflict, both sides continue to engage in
all too frequent human rights violations. According to the most
recent State Department human rights report, the Khartoum
Government maintains not only regular police and army units but
also internal and external security organs, a militia unit, and
a parallel police, called the Popular Police, whose mission
includes enforcing ``popular social behavior.''
The report notes that the government forces have been
responsible for extrajudicial killings, disappearances, forced
labor, slavery, and forced conscription of children. Imposition
of Islamic law on non-Muslims is far too common.
At the same time, according to a 1996 report from the
United Nations Special Rapporteur, religious leaders, including
Muslims, who do not conform to official policy, can be
subjected to measures of harassment, curbs on freedom of
movement, arrest, arbitrary detention and ill treatment.
Various Muslim brotherhoods are said to be subjected to
discriminatory attitudes and policies.
There are also numerous reports of human rights abuses in
the rebel held areas. Amnesty International reports that last
year, soldiers from the Sudan People's Liberation Army, or
SPLA, committed gross violations including torture and
deliberate and arbitrary killings of captured prisoners and
unarmed civilians.
Clearly, Sudanese citizens do not enjoy those basic
freedoms that we can take for granted--freedom of assembly, of
association, of privacy, of religion.
In an effort to raise international awareness of this
situation, the United States has, for 5 years in a row now,
introduced resolutions condemning Sudan under the auspices of
the United Nations Human Rights Commission as well as in the
United Nations General Assembly. These resolutions have
highlighted the range of human rights abuses and abrogation of
civil liberties that we know take place in Sudan, including, of
course, the subject of our hearing today, the persecution based
on religious beliefs.
I fully commend these efforts because I think these
resolutions, while clearly not as significant as, say, for
example, a Security Council resolution, nevertheless still send
a tremendously important signal.
Let me just read very briefly, Mr. Chairman, some of the
preamble of this year's UNHRC resolution.
The Commission on Human Rights, noting with deep concern
reports of grave human rights violations and abuses in the
Sudan, particularly detention without trial, forced
displacement of persons and torture, as described inter alia,
in numerous reports submitted to the General Assembly and the
Commission on Human Rights; expressing concern about reports of
religious persecution, including forced conversions of
Christians and animists in government-controlled areas of the
Sudan; gravely disturbed that the government has not provided
full and impartial investigations and reports on human rights
violations and abuses; deeply concerned about continued reports
of slavery, servitude, the slave trade and forced labor, the
sale and trafficking of children and their abduction and forced
internment, often at undisclosed locations; also concerned
about reports of ideological indoctrination or cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment, especially but not exclusively
affecting displaced families and women and children, belonging
to racial, ethnic, and religious minorities
----and so on.
Mr. Chairman, This isn't even half of the preamble. It goes
on and on and on, detailing the abuses that take place in the
Sudan. These findings are followed by 28 ``resolved'' clauses
expressing the outrage and concern of the commission.
Because of the gravity of the situation, the Secretary of
State made what I thought was a wise decision, to send Deputy
Assistant Secretary Gare Smith, whose testimony we will hear
shortly, to Sudan in July of this year. Mr. Smith was the
highest level U.S. diplomat to go to Sudan in several years. I
hope his rank made clear to the Sudanese Government just how
seriously we take the human rights situation in that country.
The Secretary has also just announced her decision to
reopen the embassy in Khartoum in an effort to increase
diplomatic pressure on the regime.
Now while I support her desire to include diplomacy among
the tools at her disposal, I would note that I hope this move
in no way signals a weakening of our policy toward the Sudan.
In fact, I know the chairman and I both agree that the United
States should take the toughest line possible with respect to
Sudan.
The United States cannot and will not tolerate the
disrespect for fundamental human rights that is apparent in
Sudan.
So once again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for your strong
leadership on this issue and I look forward to hearing from the
witnesses.
Senator Ashcroft. I thank Senator Feingold for his
diligence, his speech, and his research. The recitation from
the preamble of the United Nations report is a chilling
recitation.
It is now my pleasure to welcome Mr. Gare Smith, the Deputy
Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor.
Mr. Smith is the highest ranking U.S. official to visit
Sudan in years, having journeyed to the country in July
specifically to address human rights issues.
Mr. Smith, thank you for coming. We look forward to your
testimony.
STATEMENT OF GARE SMITH, DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank
you, Senator Feingold. It is certainly an honor to be here with
you all this morning.
The issue of religious persecution in Sudan is a very
troubling one. It is troubling to those of you in Congress. It
is troubling to those of us in the administration. Your video
clearly identifies that it is increasingly troubling to
American citizens throughout our country.
I think this hearing is an excellent opportunity to
emphasize to the Government of Sudan, which I am sure has
representatives sitting somewhere behind me, the deep
commitment that all of us share in respect for internationally
recognized human rights. I look forward to working with all the
members of this committee to improve the very bleak human
rights situation in the Sudan.
Since I have been asked to keep my comments brief, I would
request that my written testimony be made part of the record
and I will condense what I have to say right now.
Before addressing specifics having to do with the Sudan, I
would like to emphasize that this administration is committed
to engaging the United States in a global effort to prevent
religious persecution in the Sudan and elsewhere. President
Clinton and Secretary Albright have emphasized that religious
freedom is a universally recognized, inalienable, and
fundamental human right which is inherent to the dignity of
every human being.
There are three particular initiatives that we in the State
Department have taken in the last year or two to promote this
commitment. First, just recently, last year, the President and
Secretary Albright created the Advisory Committee on Religious
Freedom Abroad. This is composed of distinguished religious,
academic, and advocacy leaders of the major religions here in
the United States.
The committee has held a large number of meetings and
hearings on both religious persecution and reconciliation and
is preparing policy recommendations to the President and to the
Secretary of State.
Second, Secretary Albright has instructed all diplomatic
posts to give greater attention to religious freedom both in
reporting and in advocacy. As I am sure both of you are aware,
my bureau, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor,
every year puts out this document (indicating), which is the
annual human rights report, which details religious persecution
and respect for fundamental freedoms in all countries and
territories of the world. Recently, the Secretary has asked us
to particularly highlight the religious freedom aspects and to
expand upon them.
Third, this year we issued an unprecedented report titled
``U.S. Policies in Support of Religious Freedom: Focus on
Christians.'' This report details efforts by the U.S.
Government on behalf of victims of religious persecution around
the world and has a particular focus on Christians.
I would like to request that the Sudan section of this
report be made a part of the official record of this hearing.
Senator Ashcroft. Without objection, so ordered.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
[The information referred to follows:]
Excerpt From United States Policies in Support of Religious Freedom:
Focus on Christians
Sudan
Current situation: Although the military regime in Sudan has stated
that all religions should be respected, in practice the Sudanese
Government treats Islam as the de facto state religion. Forced
conversion to Islam of Christians, animists, and other non-Muslims
takes place as part of government policy. The 14-year-old civil war
between the mainly Islamic north and the largely animist and Christian
south has claimed more than a million lives. In war zones, government
efforts to restrict religious freedom are particularly heavy-handed--
churches are closed or permission to build them is denied, clergy are
harassed, and members of indigenous faiths are persecuted. There are
reports that many Christians are victims of slave raids and forced
conversion, and that some Christian children have been forced into
reeducation camps where they are given Arab names and raised as
Muslims.
U.S. Government actions: The United States has been at the
forefront of efforts to highlight and seek rectification of continuing
systematic human rights abuses, including religious persecution. At the
1997 UNHRC, the United States led efforts to adopt a resolution
strongly condemning Sudan's human rights record, including religious
persecution and forced conversion of Christians and animists. In 1996
the U.S. Government led efforts to pass tough resolutions at the UNHRC
and the UNGA to condemn Sudan for human rights abuses and to urge
redress.
At the UNHRC, the U.S. delegation helped secure from the Sudanese
Government an invitation to visit the country for the U.N. Special
Rapporteur for Human Rights in Sudan, whom the Government had barred
from visiting for two years. In his February 1996 report, the
Rapporteur concluded that people of all faiths ``are equally exposed to
violations and abuses'' stemming from the civil war. The Rapporteur's
report cited the ``severe religious persecution of Christians'' in
government-controlled major towns, especially Kadugli and Dilling. To
stem these abuses the U.S. Government continues to play a leading role
in efforts to obtain a negotiated settlement of the civil war.
In 1996 the U.S. Ambassador expressed U.S. concerns about religious
freedom, including reports of the persecution of Christians, to
Sudanese officials, including the Minister of Justice and the
Rapporteur of Sudan's Advisory Council on Human Rights. The Ambassador
also traveled to Juba, a city in southern Sudan and a garrison town of
the Government. He met with a large group of southern clergy--Muslims,
Anglican bishops, and Catholics, and with Governor Agnes Lokudu, a
practicing Christian Dinka woman and government official who has strong
influence in the region. The U.S. Government has received reports
attesting to persecution of Christians, as well as reports from Lokudu
asserting that Christians are not persecuted in areas under her
jurisdiction.
The United States suspended its resident diplomatic presence in
Sudan in February 1996. Infrequent visits to Sudan by the Ambassador
and the absence of a reporting staff limit the ability of the U.S.
Government to identify emergent human rights situations.
Mr. Smith. I believe that these initiatives illustrate the
great importance that this administration attaches to the issue
of religious freedom worldwide. I would like now specifically
to address Sudan.
Mr. Chairman, as you recently said, I travelled to Sudan in
July. I was wearing two hats, one hat in my capacity as Deputy
Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights,
and Labor, and another hat as a representative of the
Secretary's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad.
The key objective of my trip was to express United States
concern about religious persecution and other ongoing human
rights abuses perpetrated by the Government of Sudan. I was
joined in my trip by our U.S. Ambassador, whose name is Timothy
Carney. He is one of the best ambassadors we have, Mr.
Chairman. If you or Senator Feingold find the opportunity ever
to travel to Sudan yourselves to investigate some of these
problems, I think you will be very well served by Timothy
Carney.
We met with the President of Sudan, President Bashir, the
Speaker of the National Assembly, Dr. Al Turabi, the Foreign
Minister, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and all of
the major religious leaders. We also met with human rights
advocates and we went down to the south where we met with the
leaders of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement. We
travelled both to Khartoum and to towns that had recently been
retaken by the south, such as Rumbek.
We found, much as you and Senator Feingold have indicated,
a human rights situation in Sudan that can best be described as
deplorable. Both the government and the insurgents have
committed serious human rights abuses during the 14-year-old
civil war between the mainly Islamic north and largely
Christian and animist south. Civilians have paid the greatest
price in this war. Rape has been used as a tool of war, land
mines have been used indiscriminately around towns, and
children have been abducted and used as soldiers by both sides.
The war has claimed more than 1.5 million lives.
We sent a strong message to the Khartoum Government to
terminate its involvement in terrorism, seek a peaceful
resolution to the civil war, and cease its human rights abuses,
particularly discrimination of religion.
Religious liberty necessitates free speech, freedom of
assembly, and freedom of association. These conditions simply
do not exist in the Sudan.
The Government of Sudan restricts freedom of assembly,
association, religion, privacy, and movement. Although Sudanese
law recognizes Sudan as a multi-religious country, in practice
the government treats Islam as the State religion. The Sudanese
Government has instituted its own version of Islamic Shari'ah
law and has a policy of impeding any non-Islamic religious
expression. I emphasize ``its own version,'' much as I noticed
you did in your testimony, Mr. Chairman, because when I was
there, I met with a large number of Muslims who felt that they
too were persecuted on the basis of their religious beliefs.
They indicated that the government was very extreme and did
not, in fact, represent Islam.
The forced Islamization of Christians, animists, and other
non-Muslims is standard government policy in the Sudan. In
government-controlled areas of the south, we have documented
credible evidence of a policy of Islamization of public
institutions. Some non-Muslims have lost their jobs in the
civil service, the judiciary, and other professions. Few non-
Muslim university graduates find government jobs. Non-Muslim
businessmen complain of harassment and discrimination by the
government, and there are reports that Muslims receive
preferential treatment for limited government services,
including access to medical care.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of religious intolerance
and persecution is the 1991 apostasy laws, which state that
conversion by Muslims to non-Islamic religions is punishable by
death.
Paul Marshall's book, Their Blood Cries Out, and
publications by Christian Solidarity International and several
other NGO's describe in sad detail some of the horrible
persecutions endured by Christians in Sudan.
Churches have been closed, Christian children have been
forced into reeducation camps where they are given Arab names
and raised as Muslims. Many Christians have been victims of
slave raids and forced conversions.
In all of our meetings with Sudanese Government officials,
I stressed the deep concern throughout the U.S. Government
regarding these abysmal human rights violations. I also
emphasized that what we were discussing were universal norms.
These are not U.S. values that we are seeking to impose on the
people of Sudan. These are norms that the international
community has embraced and articulated in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
Because religious persecution and other human rights abuses
in the Sudan are closely related to the civil war, our
government has played a leading role in efforts to obtain a
negotiated settlement. During my mission, I pressed Khartoum to
seek a diplomatic resolution through the peace process.
Ambassador Carney continued to do so in the weeks following my
trip.
I am very pleased to report that just this Monday, the
Sudanese Government and the SPLM issued a joint communique in
which they pledged to participate in peace talks in Nairobi in
late October. This is a tremendous breakthrough.
The administration has also taken several steps to achieve
our other policy goals with respect to Sudan. In 1993, we
placed Sudan on the terrorist list and imposed a series of
unilateral sanctions consistent with that designation. The
administration is also actively considering the imposition of
additional unilateral economic sanctions against Sudan.
We are willing to consider a reasonable and workable
expansion of sanctions to reflect lack of progress by the
Sudanese Government in the areas of terrorism and in human
rights.
I would note that we have also worked multilaterally in
this arena. The U.S. has led international efforts to isolate
Sudan for its egregious human rights practices. At the U.N.
Human Rights Commission, we have introduced and gained
consensus agreement on a condemnatory resolution on Sudan's
human rights record every year since 1993. This past session,
the U.S. co-sponsored a consensus resolution strongly
condemning religious persecution and particularly forced
conversions. In fact, I was the co-head of delegation this year
and was personally involved with that resolution.
Last year, we succeeded in pressuring the Sudanese
Government to readmit the U.N. Human Rights Rapporteur for
Sudan, Gaspar Biro. Mr. Biro has cited severe religious
persecution in government controlled areas in his reports. He
has also cited the forced religious indoctrination of children
and denial of food and facilities to refugees who refuse to
convert to Islam.
In his February 1997 report, Mr. Biro concluded, and I
quote, ``The situation regarding the freedom of religion and
conscience has further deteriorated.''
In recent years, the United States has also introduced two
successful resolutions at the United Nations General Assembly
calling for an end to human rights violations, including
religious persecution and slavery. We plan to continue our
efforts to draw international attention to these human rights
violations.
Mr. Chairman, in closing, I want to reiterate that this
administration is firmly committed to combating religious
persecution in the Sudan. We do not claim to have all the
answers as to how to most effectively insure respect for
religious freedom. But we are working on all bilateral and
multilateral fronts to promote this and other fundamental
freedoms.
We look forward to working very closely with you and other
members of the subcommittee to combat religious persecution and
to strengthen respect for religious freedom in the Sudan.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of The Hon. Gare Smith, Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
Mr. Chairman and Subcommittee Members, thank you for the
opportunity to participate in this important hearing on the very
troubling issue of religious persecution in Sudan. Your leadership is
critical to casting a spotlight on the serious human rights abuses in
Sudan. This hearing is an excellent opportunity to emphasize to the
Government of Sudan our deep commitment to respect for internationally
recognized human rights. I look forward to working closely with you and
this committee to improve the bleak human rights situation in Sudan.
Before turning to specifics of Sudan, I would like to emphasize
that this Administration is committed to engaging the United States in
a global effort to prevent religious persecution. Secretary Albright
has stated that: ``Our commitment to religious liberty is even more
than the expression of American ideals: it is a fundamental source of
our strength in the world. We simply could not lead without it. We
would be naive to think that we could advance our interests without
it.''
Religious freedom is a universally recognized, inalienable and
fundamental human right inherent in the dignity of every human being.
President Clinton and Secretary Albright have made clear that advancing
religious freedom is a foreign policy priority of the United States.
Very briefly, here are three of the initiatives we are taking globally
to implement this commitment.
Last year, the President and Secretary Albright created the
Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, which is composed of
distinguished religious, academic, and advocacy leaders. The Committee
has held extensive hearings on both religious persecution and
reconciliation and is preparing policy recommendations to the President
and Secretary.
Second, Secretary Albright, in a series of worldwide cables, has
instructed all United States diplomatic posts to give greater attention
to religious freedom, both in their reporting and in their advocacy. In
practical terms, this means that the Secretary of State is telling
State Department employees and foreign governments alike that religious
liberty is a key component of our human rights policy. The State
Department reports publicly on religious persecution in our annual
Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which provides information
on 194 countries and territories, with specific sections on religious
liberty, which have been expanded by this Administration to include
greater detail on religious persecution.
Third, this year we issued an unprecedented report on U.S. Policies
in Support of Religious Freedom: Focus on Christians. This report
details recent United States action taken on behalf of victims of
religious persecution around the world, with a focus on Christians. I
would like to request that the Sudan section of this report be made a
part of the official record of this hearing.
Now, to Sudan. Mr. Chairman, I recently traveled to the Sudan on
behalf of the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and the
Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad, to
express United States concern about religious persecution and other
ongoing human rights abuses perpetrated and/or sanctioned by the
Government of Sudan. Given the poor state of current relations, I was
the most senior State Department official to visit Sudan in three
years.
Sudan is presently the only country in Sub-Saharan Africa that
poses a direct threat to United States national security interests. The
current Sudanese regime provides support for terrorist organizations
and activities, works to destabilize neighboring states friendly to the
United States, violates the human rights of its people, continues a
deadly civil war, and maintains an authoritarian system of government.
United States policy is to pressure and isolate the Sudanese regime
and to seek to contain the threat it poses to United States interests.
We hope such pressure may compel the regime to modify its behavior.
The human rights situation in Sudan remains extremely poor. Both
the government and insurgents have committed serious human rights
abuses during the 14-year-old civil war between the mainly Islamic
north and the largely Christian and animist south. This war has claimed
more than a million and a half lives. We continue to press the Sudanese
government to terminate its involvement in terrorism, to seek an end to
the civil war, and to cease systematic human rights abuses, including
the practice of religious persecution.
In terms of human rights issues in general, we have detailed in the
Country Reports that government forces, led by the National Islamic
Front (NIF), have been responsible for extrajudicial killings,
disappearances, forced labor, slavery, and the forced conscription of
children. Government security forces have regularly harassed,
arbitrarily arrested and detained, tortured, and beaten opponents or
suspected opponents of the government with impunity. Prison conditions
are harsh, the judiciary is largely subservient to the government, the
authorities do not ensure due process, and the military summarily tries
and punishes citizens.
Concurrently, the civil war has had tragic consequences for the
Sudanese people, including the use of rape as a tool of war by both
sides of the conflict, the indiscriminate use of landmines, and child
abductions. The overall human rights picture is bleak, and problems for
religious minorities persist.
Mr. Chairman, religious liberty necessitates free speech, and
freedom of assembly and association, conditions that do not exist in
Sudan. The Government of Sudan restricts freedom of assembly,
association, religion, privacy, and movement. Although Sudanese law
recognizes Sudan as a multireligious country, in practice, the
government treats Islam as the state religion. The Sudanese government
has instituted its own version of Islamic Shari'a law and has a policy
of impeding any non-Islamic religious expression. Forced Islamization
of Christians, animists, and other non-Muslims takes place as part of
government policy. In government-controlled areas of the south, we have
documented credible evidence of a policy of Islamization of public
institutions. Some non-Muslims have lost their jobs in the civil
service, the judiciary, and other professions. Few non-Muslim
university graduates find government jobs. Some non-Muslim businessmen
complain of petty harassment and discrimination in the awarding of
government contracts and trade licenses. There are also reports that
Muslims receive preferential treatment for the limited services
provided by the government, including access to medical care. But
perhaps the most dramatic example of religious intolerance and
persecution is the 1991 apostasy law that states that conversion by
Muslims to nonIslamic religions is punishable by death.
Paul Marshall's book, Their Blood Cries Out, and publications by
Christian Solidarity International, the Institute on Religion and
Democracy, and other nongovernmental organizations describe in sad
detail some of the horrible persecutions endured by Christians in
Sudan. Churches have been closed, Christian children have been forced
into reeducation camps where they are given Arab names and raised as
Muslims, and many Christians are victims of slave raids and forced
conversions.
At this point in my testimony, I would like to note for the record
that religious persecution in the Sudan is not limited to persecution
of Christians. Animists, and even Muslims who are not considered to be
in line with the government's vision of Islamic orthodoxy, are subject
to persecution.
We have an excellent U.S. Ambassador to Sudan, Timothy Carney, who
is stationed in Kenya and makes regular visits to Khartoum. He
continues to emphasize our serious concerns regarding the Sudanese
government's lack of respect for universal human rights, including
religious freedom. I would note that his task is made even more
difficult by the Sudanese government's continued support for
international terrorism and the consequent downturn in relations
between our two governments.
As I mentioned earlier in my testimony, I conducted a human rights
mission to the Sudan in July. Ambassador Carney joined me for much of
that trip. We met with President Omar al Bashir, Speaker of the
National Assembly Dr. Hassan al Turabi, Foreign Minister Ali Osman
Mohammed Taha, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Obeid Haj Ali,
Minister of External Relations Ali Osman Taha, and the Commissioner of
the Slavery and Disappearances Commission.
In all meetings with Sudanese officials, I stressed that there is
broad and deep concern throughout the U.S. Government--in the Executive
Branch and in Congress--about the abysmal state of human rights in
Sudan. I informed them that the President and Secretary of State have
established an Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom, and that the
State Department had just published a report on the persecution of
Christians at the request of Congress. I emphasized that at issue are
universal human rights values, not an effort by the United States to
impose its own values.
My discussions focused on credible reports of religious
persecution, slavery, forced conversions and female genital mutilation.
I pressed hard for an end to government-sponsored and government-
sanctioned human rights abuses and religious persecution. Specifically,
I urged the government to adopt initiatives to permit and support:
human rights observers in areas of conflict; family reunification;
rule-of-law (including the suspension of laws on preventive detention);
prosecution and conviction of security and military officials violating
human rights; an end to the use of landmines; and extended
investigations by the Commission on Slavery and Disappearances into
areas controlled by rebel forces.
Regrettably, virtually all of the government officials with whom I
met offered a standard response regarding the question of slavery,
i.e., that it is purely a form of capture for ransom and results from
traditional tribal warfare. No one disputed my specific charges
regarding religious discrimination in Sudan.
On this mission, in addition to Sudanese government officials, I
met representatives of all major religious denominations, women's
organizations, and human rights attorneys. I also met with members of
the opposition Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in southern
Sudan and visited a city recently brought under the control of rebel
forces, where I gained firsthand knowledge from local residents of
their experiences under NIF rule.
In an effort to relieve the suffering of victims of the ongoing
conflict, the United States provides humanitarian relief primarily
through non-governmental organizations working under the auspices of
the United Nations Operation Lifeline Sudan. The principal
beneficiaries of this assistance are war-affected civilians in southern
Sudan.
Mr. Chairman, because religious persecution and other human rights
abuses in Sudan are closely related to the civil war, the United States
plays a leading role in efforts to obtain a negotiated settlement.
During my mission I pressed Sudanese government officials to seek a
peaceful resolution through the peace process known as the
Intergovernmental Authority on Development, or IGAD. I am pleased that
Ambassador Carney has continued that course and persuaded IGAD members
to reenergize the peace process. On Monday, September 22, the Sudanese
government and the SPLM issued a joint communique in which they pledged
to participate in peace talks scheduled to begin in Nairobi on October
28, 1997.
The Administration has taken several steps to achieve our policy
goals with respect to Sudan. In 1993, the Administration placed Sudan
on the terrorist list and imposed a series of unilateral sanctions
consistent with that designation. The Administration is actively
considering the imposition of additional unilateral economic sanctions
against Sudan, consistent with overall U.S. policy as well as with
significant concerns expressed by many Members of Congress. We are
willing to consider a reasonable and workable expansion of sanctions to
reflect the lack of Sudanese government action on issues of concern
such as state-sponsored terrorism, aggressive actions against
neighbors, failure to come to terms with the opposition in the civil
war, and an abysmal human rights record, including violations of
religious freedom.
The U.S. has led international efforts to isolate Sudan for its
egregious human rights abuses. At the UN Human Rights Commission
(UNHRC), the U.S. government has introduced and gained consensus
agreement on condemnatory resolutions on Sudan's human rights record
annually since 1993. This past session, the U.S. cosponsored a
consensus resolution strongly condemning religious persecution and
forced conversions.
Last year, the U.S. succeeded in pressuring the Sudanese government
to re-admit the UN Special Human Rights Rapporteur in Sudan, Gaspar
Biro. Biro had been barred from visiting Sudan for two years. Since
Biro began his work in April 1993, he has published five public
reports. In November 1996, he reported that people of all faiths ``are
equally exposed to violations and abuses'' stemming from the civil war,
and he cited severe religious persecution in government-controlled
areas, including the forced religious indoctrination of children, and
the denial of food and facilities to refugees who refuse to convert to
Islam. In his February 1997 report, Biro concluded that ``the situation
regarding the freedom of religion and conscience has further
deteriorated.'' Biro went to Sudan again this year prior to the UNHRC
session in March, but departed after only a few days due to security
reasons.
In recent years, the United States has also introduced two
successful resolutions at the United Nations General Assembly calling
for the end to human rights violations, including religious persecution
and slavery, by both the Government of Sudan and southern opposition
groups. The Administration plans to continue efforts to draw
international attention to Sudanese human rights violations.
Mr. Chairman, in closing let me reiterate that the Administration
is firmly committed to combating religious persecution in Sudan. We
don't claim to have all the answers as to how to most effectively
ensure respect for religious freedom. But we are working on all
bilateral and multilateral fronts to promote this and other fundamental
freedoms.
We look forward to working closely with you, and other Members of
this Subcommittee, to combat religious persecution and strengthen
respect for religious freedom in the Sudan.
Senator Ashcroft. Thank you very much. I appreciate the
fact that you would come and appear before us, Mr. Secretary. I
would be pleased if you could respond to several questions of
mine.
You have before you a volume, which is a substantial
volume, about religious freedom and persecution around the
world and different human rights violations. How would you
compare the situation in Sudan to what is happening in other
countries in terms of persecution?
Mr. Smith. It's difficult to compare apples and oranges. A
country may be good in one area and have problems in another.
But I wouldn't hesitate to state that Sudan has some of the
most egregious human rights violations in the world. Certainly
the violation of freedom of religion is paramount among these.
Senator Ashcroft. You mentioned that you believed there
would be present in the hearing today representatives of the
Sudanese Government. Is that your belief?
Mr. Smith. I'd be very surprised if they weren't here or at
least listening to us on television.
Senator Ashcroft. Is it your view, then, that holding
hearings like this is helpful in raising the level of
consciousness and developing an awareness of what is happening
there?
Mr. Smith. I think it is fundamental to doing so, and the
administration very much appreciates your leadership in this
area.
Senator Ashcroft. You indicated that you very directly
raised these issues with the Sudanese Government in person.
We're raising them in absentia here. What was the response of
Sudanese officials to the kinds of items which I take it you
have mentioned--slavery, rape, landmines, abductions.
We send children to camp in the United States, but not the
kind of camps for children in Sudan. My view is that
reeducation ``camps'' are an all too easy euphemism for
kidnapping and brainwashing. Maybe not. But what kind of
response did the Sudanese officials give you?
Mr. Smith. I would certainly tend to agree with you in your
assessment of that, Mr. Chairman.
It is interesting in that the response I got was rather
varied. Every member of the Sudanese Government I met with
emphatically denied that there was any slavery whatsoever in
the Sudan--period. I could not get past that.
On the other hand, I was able to be very specific with
respect to religious persecution and no one was able to deny
that.
I cited, for example, that I had met with members of the
Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has petitioned for 25
years to build another church in the greater Khartoum area--of
course, the relevant portion of that period being since 1989,
when this government came to power. Every single year the
government has refused to let the Catholic church build a new
church while, in the meantime, mosques are being built--clearly
a form of religious discrimination. And the government
acknowledged that.
On a less cosmic scale, individuals who are put in jail in
the Sudan can be released early for memorizing verses from the
Koran--but not if they memorize verses from the Torah, or if
they memorize verses from the Bible--again a clear form of
discrimination. And again, when I brought that forward on a
specific basis, the government acknowledged that that was, in
fact, discrimination.
They tended to downpedal it and say it wasn't very
important, but they acknowledged specific instances.
I am glad you mentioned landmines because, while I was
there, the government emphasized that they were hoping to go
forward with the peace process. I told them, frankly, that they
had very little credibility with the United States and the
international community, because whenever they had previously
claimed to have interest in the peace process they always ended
up stepping back from the table. I suggested that they take
some confidence building measures, such as a unilateral ban on
the use of landmines. President Bashir expressed a particular
interest in that. He did not commit the government, but he did
express a strong interest in ending the use of landmines.
Those are just some of the responses I got to the issues I
raised.
Senator Ashcroft. Yesterday, the most recent chairman of
the Congressional Black Caucus, Don Payne, sent a letter to the
President. He said,
I was extremely disappointed to learn about the State
Department's decision to restaff our embassy in Sudan. Why are
we rewarding the National Islamic Front Government by reopening
the embassy without any tangible evidence of reform? The NIF
Government continues its war policy in southern Sudan, condones
slavery, targets innocent civilians, and supports terrorism.
This does ask a question that I think a lot of people would
have and I would like to give you an opportunity to respond to
that question.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Certainly I share the Congressman's concern that we do not
want to reward the Khartoum Government for positive actions
that it has not taken. And, in fact, the way in which we intend
to staff the embassy would ensure that we don't reward them.
For one thing, we are making very, very clear, as we are
again in this hearing, that staffing that embassy is not a
signal of an improvement in our relationship.
We are not sending Ambassador Carney back. As I mentioned,
he is a superb Ambassador, but he is not going back
specifically because we don't want to add the credibility of
his presence to our relationship at this point.
But we have very good reasons for sending personnel back.
First and foremost is the peace process. As I mentioned, it was
just literally Monday, a few days ago, that both sides, in a
joint communique, indicated that they wanted to go forward. It
is perfectly consistent with our government policy to support
that peace process, to do everything we can to promote it, and
we need people on the ground to do that.
Secondarily, it is very hard to document the human rights
violations we have been discussing if we don't have anyone on
the ground. To be specific in our reports, we need to have
personnel on the ground.
There is a third reason. We have over 2,000 American
citizens in the Sudan right now. We also have a number of very
courageous NGO's, some of which will be testifying after me.
And in order to be responsive to their needs, particularly in
cases of emergency, we need to have people on the ground.
Senator Ashcroft. From your own information, would you say
that the video which we saw was fairly representative of the
situation in Sudan?
Mr. Smith. To the best of my knowledge, that was fairly
representative. Yes, sir.
Senator Ashcroft. Thank you.
Senator Feingold.
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith, as we already have indicated today, religious
persecution is only one of the many abuses of human rights that
have been noted in the Sudan. How can you sort of assess the
relative importance of the lack of religious freedoms as
opposed to the absence of other civil liberties? Is this sort
of at the top of the list? How would you try to compare them?
Mr. Smith. Senator Feingold, I am very glad that you raised
that because this is an issue that has come up in the
international community a good deal--the ranking of universal
human rights.
Certainly in terms of our commitment to religious freedom,
it could not be any higher on the agenda of this
administration. But we tread on very, very dangerous ground if
we seek to say which is more important, genocide, the
separation of families, or freedom of religion. It is a little
bit like my asking you which of your children you love the
most. You love them all very much, perhaps in different ways,
but equally. We feel that in order to keep fundamental norms
respected worldwide, it is very important to simply say that
they are all universal, they are all very important, and we
regard them all highly.
Senator Feingold. I guess what I was asking was not which
of the values is more important but which area of abuse is the
most severe. Surely it is possible that one kind of human
rights violation would be more prevalent than another.
Mr. Smith. Right.
Senator Feingold. I am wondering if the religious freedom
element would be at the very top of the list or sort of
comparable to the other aspects of human rights violations.
Mr. Smith. I would say that it permeates all aspects of
society there. I mean, it is closely tied to the war. It is
closely tied, as I mentioned, to the economic situation. You
cannot have a job in the government in most likelihood if you
are not a Muslim. It is tied to the economy. It is tied
certainly to the schooling, to the reeducation camps. So it is
really pervasive.
I don't know whether there are more cases of rape than
there are violations of religious freedom or landmines. And
these are hard to compare. They are all egregious violations of
fundamental norms.
Senator Feingold. Religious persecution is obviously a
driving principle, though, of the regime.
Mr. Smith. Absolutely. Absolutely, Senator.
Senator Feingold. Officially, the Government of Sudan has
stated that all religion should be respected and that freedom
of worship is ensured. In the 1996 State Department report,
however, the Sudan Government is described as having severely
restricted freedom of religion, treating Islam as the State
religion, and using Islamic law to inspire the country's laws.
Could you elaborate a little on that? Which domestic laws
are most affected by Islamic law?
Mr. Smith. Well, I think the one that I cited earlier is
perhaps the most chilling--the apostasy law. If you are a
Muslim person in the Sudan and you decide that you want to
become a Christian or you want to become a Buddhist or you want
to become a member of the Jewish faith, you can be put to death
for doing that. That is a rather chilling law.
Other legal punishments include stoning and the chopping
off of hands. These are really horrific. This is also a key
element of the war because the people in the south don't want
to have this form of Shari'ah law imposed on them and they have
no representation in the government.
Senator Feingold. We have talked a little bit about the
fact, and you referred to the fact that Muslim groups also
experience discrimination in Sudan.
Could you say a little bit more about examples of
discrimination against Muslims and how prevalent that is?
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir.
I want to emphasize very strongly in my testimony that our
government, this administration, is not anti-Muslim, anti-
Islam. Islam is one of the great religions of the world. The
Secretary's Religious Advisory Committee has several Muslim
members who have made wonderful contributions.
The form of Islam that the NIF Government perpetuates is
very unusual. It is very extreme and severe.
I met with a number of Sunni Muslim leaders in Khartoum who
said that they were prohibited from worshipping freely. They
complained that they were harassed when they sought to expand
their forms of religious worship, that it was harder for them
to obtain permission to have their mosques built, and that they
were discriminated against in the employment sector inasmuch as
they were prohibited from being government employees if they
didn't subscribe to the NIF's form of Islam.
Senator Feingold. Do the death penalty provisions having to
do with conversion apply to converting from one type of Islam
to another?
Mr. Smith. Not to my knowledge, Senator.
Senator Feingold. Do Sudanese citizens face obstacles--and
I think you have already alluded to this, but I would like more
on the record--with regard to job placement, education, or
business opportunities as a result of religious beliefs?
Mr. Smith. Absolutely.
There are a few non-Muslims in the government to whom all
of the other government members will point and say, ``We have a
Christian. Look, right over there, he's in that office. Go talk
to him.'' Or, ``We have some churches down the street. Walk
around Khartoum and you will see it is a multiethnic society
and we respect freedom of religion.''
It is easy for them to point out examples because they make
sure that there are a couple around. But when you look at the
way the law is interpreted, the way policies are interpreted,
there is no question that there is a pattern of gross
discrimination.
Senator Feingold. Some say that Sudan's Islamic policies
are less restrictive than other countries, such as Saudi Arabia
and Egypt. They argue, for example, that women are not forced
to cover their faces or bodies.
Do you agree with that assessment? Do Sudanese women face
restrictions on travel and employment? If you would, say a
little bit about the status of women in Sudan.
Mr. Smith. Sure. I am glad you brought that up.
Anyone who walks the streets of Khartoum will see that not
all women have their faces covered with veils. Some do. That
may be a matter of choice.
But there certainly are factors limiting women's
fundamental rights. For example, women in the Sudan are not
allowed to travel internationally without a male companion.
Incidents of domestic violence against women are very high
in the Sudan. I met with some women advocates who were seeking
to end the use of female genital mutilation in the Sudan. By
most estimates, 90 to 95 percent of the women in the Sudan have
undergone female genital mutilation. That is just an incredibly
high percentage of the female population.
The Government of Sudan, interestingly enough, promised
these women activists that it would seek to end female genital
mutilation by the year 2000. I don't know why it did that
because it has made no effort to follow through on this
commitment. It is not against the law to perform female genital
mutilation and, although the government controls all elements
of the media--the newspapers, the television, the radio--it has
never launched a campaign to end it. So I would say that that
inertia really reflects how seriously the government intends to
undertake this effort.
Senator Feingold. Thank you.
You represented the U.S. at the Human Rights Commission
meeting earlier this year, I believe, as you indicated.
Mr. Smith. Yes, sir.
Senator Feingold. Say a little bit about your experience
there in getting that Sudan resolution passed. In particular,
what are the views of our allies with respect to the human
rights situation in Sudan?
Mr. Smith. I am pleased to say that our allies take the
situation in Sudan very seriously. I was able to work very
closely with our allies not only in Europe, with our
traditional Western allies, but with representatives of nations
all over the world, including Asia and Africa.
I would emphasize that this resolution passed unanimously.
We had no countries disagreeing with our assessment and our
concerns regarding fundamental human rights.
That is the way it has been every single year we have
brought that resolution. So it is clear that the international
community has deep concerns about these issues.
Senator Feingold. Finally, Mr. Chairman, I just have one
more series of questions and comments. And, again, I apologize
that I have to leave after this and want to thank all the
witnesses.
I just want to return to a subject that the chairman
mentioned, and that is an item that I mentioned in my initial
comments, which is the reopening of the embassy in Khartoum.
The first comment I want to make is I think we would
appreciate getting a little more notice of this happening. I am
concerned about the letter from Congressman Payne, for whom I
have a very high regard, with regard to this subject. I am not
rejecting out of hand the justification that you have given,
that it is important to have some people there to know what is
going on. But I am going to closely monitor it and, in
particular, I want to repeat that that move--and you have
indicated this as well--cannot and should not be interpreted as
any sign that we will tolerate the conduct of the regime in
Khartoum and that our purpose in having some folks there, if it
is to continue, is to monitor what is going on.
I would indicate--and I believe the chairman would agree
with this--that any attempt to send the Ambassador there at
this time would not be regarded in the same way and it would be
very difficult to claim that that was merely for purposes of
monitoring what is happening in Sudan.
So I am listening to your justification for that. I cannot
say it is wrong at this point. But I am going to actively do my
own monitoring with regard to that question because the conduct
of this regime is just so incredibly extreme that we have to
take a very clear approach to it.
I thank the chairman and I thank the witnesses.
Would you like to respond?
Mr. Smith. Yes. I just want to say that I appreciate your
comments very much, Senator. I share your concerns very much.
I would note, just parenthetically, that our embassy, in
fact, has never been closed in the Sudan. We have never severed
our diplomatic relations. We have taken our U.S. personnel out
for security reasons, but our relations have continued. The
embassy has remained open. We will make sure in the future to
discuss any new policy developments regarding this issue with
you, in advance, Senator.
Senator Feingold. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Ashcroft. Thank you, Senator Feingold.
Mr. Smith, you may be aware that I introduced legislation
which has been included in the State Department Reauthorization
Bill to prohibit financial transactions between U.S. citizens
and the Sudanese Government.
The administration has opposed this provision in spite of
the fact that I believe it is critical to cut the flow of U.S.
dollars, at least from U.S. citizens, to this rogue regime.
I wonder why we should maintain economic dealings with a
government involved in international terrorism abroad and
domestic terrorism against its own people. The President's
nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Susan
Rice, reinforced the administration's opposition to my bill,
stating that the President already has ``in place sufficient
tools to impose sanctions against States whose behavior the
U.S. would like to change.''
If that is the case--and certainly their authorization of
the Occidental Oil deal with Sudan last year did not indicate a
clear willingness on the part of this administration to
restrain commercial dealings with Sudan--if we could dare take
the administration at its word, that it has in place sufficient
tools, does the administration have any intention of further
sanctioning the Sudanese Government? And, as Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State for Human Rights, would you recommend
additional sanctions of any kind on Sudan?
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I will answer
those questions in reverse.
First, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human
Rights, I would recommend further sanctions and I think this
administration is eager to look at appropriate further
sanctions and to work with the Congress in articulating them.
Second, I think your idea of limiting financial
transactions is an excellent one. I think that concept has been
embraced by the administration, and I think we would be willing
to work closely with you to put that into place in a workable
way.
There are a couple of different reasons why the
administration has opposed the provision as it stands right
now. First, we believe we have in place sufficient tools to
impose sanctions against States whose behavior we would like to
change, by and large. Second, this provision restricts the
ability of the Secretary of State to pursue negotiations in the
U.S. interest, as currently stated.
We are particularly concerned that the legislation
endangers our ability to act as a broker in the Middle East
peace process. The Ashcroft provision would effectively impose
an economic embargo on Syria, for example, in a way that we
think would be unhelpful in pursuing the peace process.
That being said, I think there are ways that we can, and
should, limit financial transactions. There need to be
sufficient exceptions put in place--for example, to keep our
embassy running. We need to be able to buy postage stamps for
international mail, we need to be able to conduct banking
transactions, and we would want to be able to have some
exceptions to keep the embassy running and so that NGO's could
effectively continue to operate there.
But the concept, again, I think is an excellent one.
Senator Ashcroft. I am pleased to have your assurance in
that respect. I was distressed when last year the
administration was given flexibility and the administration
decided to announce a policy large enough to drive a truck-load
of explosives or slaves to be sold on the market through. I am
very eager to confer with the administration to include waiver
potential that would allow continuation of the peace process
and NGO relief activity. The administration drafted a policy in
response to the recent anti-terrorism legislation which would
allow direct financing of the bombing of the plane that was
knocked out of the sky at Lockerbie, for example. We cannot
continue to have that kind of either sloppy draftsmanship,
reckless indifference as to the wellbeing of individuals in the
international community, or outright subversion of
Congressional intent.
So I thank you very much for your attention to this matter.
I am eager to draft and provide a basis for reasonable waivers
and would be very eager to collaborate on that, to move this
issue forward.
I thank you very much for your appearance here.
I would indicate to you that if you would like to submit
any additional material for the record, I will hold the record
open until the close of business today for so doing. I would
like to say that, as part of the committee record, I would
submit the letter of Representative Donald Payne from the Tenth
District of New Jersey, who has written to the President of the
United States expressing his disappointment about the State
Department's decision to restaff the embassy.
[The information referred to follows:]
Hon. Donald M. Payne,
House of Representatives,
Washington DC, September 24, 1997.
The Honorable William Jefferson Clinton,
The White House,
Washington, DC 20500.
Dear Mr. President, I was extremely disappointed to learn about
the State Department's decision to re-staff our embassy in Sudan. Why
are we rewarding the National Islamic Front (NIF) government by
reopening the embassy without any tangible evidence of reform? The NIF
government continues its war policy in southern Sudan, condones
slavery, targets innocent civilians and supports terrorism.
Mr. President, I was led to believe that the Administration will
increase pressure on the NIF government for the reasons mentioned
above. The Administration was correct when it pledged to support the
``Frontline'' states and took the leadership at the United Nations last
year. The decision to send back our diplomats not only will place our
people in harms way, but also contradicts the Administration's stated
policy objectives. Most important, the government in Khartoum will
interpret this move as a sign of approval at a time when we should be
clear about our objectives in the Sudan.
The people of Sudan have suffered under the brutal dictatorship of
the NIF regime for more than seven years. We should state clearly to
this government that enough is enough? The NIF government remains an
obstacle to peace and a threat to regional stability. The government
has yet to comply with U.N. Security Council resolutions demands to
handover three terrorists accused in the attempted assassination of
President Mubarak.
This decision will have serious consequences on our overall Sudan
policy. The timing is wrong. The policy will inevitably be
counterproductive. Ironically, the only beneficiary will be the
Government of Sudan. It is important that we send a strong message to
the government that their behavior is unacceptable. I strongly urge you
not to reward this brutal government by reopening the embassy--the
people of Sudan deserve better. This policy is indefensible and cannot
be justified without significant progress on the human rights front and
commitment to peace. I strongly urge you to do the right thing and
reconsider your decision.
Sincerely,
Donald M. Payne,
Member of Congress.
Senator Ashcroft. I thank you, Secretary Smith.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Ashcroft. Now I would call the second panel to come
to the witness table.
May I invite the placement of these photographs to this
table here (indicating) or to another setting so that the
audience might have a chance to see them.
I thank the staff for their assistance with these items.
It is my pleasure now to call the second panel of
witnesses. The Baroness Cox, Deputy Speaker for the House of
Lords in England, is a world renowned advocate for religious
freedom and other civil liberties. It is an honor to have you
with us, Baroness Cox, and I would welcome your testimony at
this time.
STATEMENT OF THE BARONESS COX, DEPUTY SPEAKER, THE HOUSE OF
LORDS, LONDON, ENGLAND, AND PRESIDENT, CHRISTIAN SOLIDARITY
INTERNATIONAL, UNITED KINGDOM
Baroness Cox. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am
grateful for the opportunity to give evidence today of gross
violations of human rights by the Government of Sudan, with
particular reference to religious persecution.
This evidence is based on first-hand experience of 15
visits to Sudan, including 4 this year, with Christian
Solidarity International, or CSI, a human rights organization
working for victims of oppression regardless of their creed or
color and particularly trying to reach those who are cutoff
from other organizations.
We have been in many different areas in Sudan--in the
south, the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile, Eastern
Upper Nile, and eastern Sudan. I will conclude before I finish
with some recommendations for consideration by all concerned
with human rights and with particular reference to religious
liberty.
Mr. Chairman, the evidence I present is spelled out in
fuller form in a written version. I would be grateful if it
could be made available for the record. But because time is of
a limit, I will only speak from extracts from that.
Senator Ashcroft. Thank you. We would be pleased to include
the entirety of your presentation as reflected in the written
record in the record of the committee.
Baroness Cox. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, as the video and as the previous testimony
have shown, the situation in Sudan is very complex. Although
the primary victims of religious persecution have been African
Christians of the south and the Nuba Mountains, many other
groups, including Muslims and animists, are also suffering
persecution.
This is because the NIF totalitarian military regime has
declared a jihad, not only against Christians but against
others who oppose it, including Muslims and animists, who are
fighting for freedom from repression, for survival of their
culture, and for fundamental human rights, including religious
liberty.
Therefore, many Arab Muslims from the north, the majority
of whom belong to opposition parties represented in the
previously democratically elected government, have suffered
arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial
killings.
For example, on April 3 of this year, the NIF disrupted the
29th memorial festival of Al-Sayid Ali Al-Merghani, blocking
access to the celebration and using tear gas. Many people were
subsequently imprisoned, including the imam of the mosque.
So the tragic war must not be seen simplistically in terms
of a war between Christians and Muslims. It is a war between
that fundamentalist, totalitarian Islamic regime against its
own citizens--a war which has caused over 1.5 million deaths
and led to the displacement, we reckon, of over 5 million
people from their homes and their lands, inflicting
incalculable suffering through brutal violations of human
rights, including the persecution of Christians, which reflects
a fundamental feature of the regime's policy of enforced
Islamization.
That policy is implemented by diverse interrelated
strategies which can be summarized under four headings: first,
military offensives against civilians; second, the displacement
of people from their homes and homelands; third, the abduction
and enslavement of tens of thousands of black Africans and
enforced Islamization of those who are not already Muslim; and,
fourth, the abduction and forced conscription of thousands of
boys and young men into the government army.
I could just say a few brief words on each of those.
First: Military offensives against civilians. The
government has been undertaking this ferocious war against its
own people in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue
Nile and eastern Sudan. It has received massive financial
assistance from other fundamentalist terrorist regimes which
support its terrorism. And these, I am sorry to have to report,
a serious report, include recent reports of donations from Iran
to purchase weapons, including tanks, MIG fighter aircraft, and
chemical weapons.
The government denies it bombs civilians, but I have spent
hours in foxholes during aerial bombardment of innocent
civilians. Only last month, in eastern Sudan, with the Beja
Muslim people, an Antonov flew directly overhead, discharging
its deadly cargo on civilians nearby. Such aerial bombardment
inflicts not only death and injury, it terrorizes civilians,
drives them from their homelands into the bush, the desert or
the mountains, where they have to scavenge for food. Often they
are cutoff from water supplies, they suffer from cold at night
with no shirt, clothes, blankets, or mosquito nets.
I just give one example of the response to such military
assaults by those who have been forced to take up arms against
them.
In Kapoeta, the SPLA commander, Commander Cirillo, is a
practicing Catholic. He does not want to fight this war. But he
describes the regime's war against the south as a war to
Islamize Sudan. I quote his words, ``Before battle, the
Mujahadeen and other Islamic fundamentalist zealots customarily
shout and chant: `We will force you to become Muslims whether
you want to or not.' The Muslim fundamentalists cannot defeat
us. We are firm as Christians, and we will die for our faith.''
But he made an important distinction. ``Our struggle is not
against Islam, as such, or against Muslims, but it is against a
fundamentalist regime that wants to destroy our African
heritage and our faith. It is discouraging to see the Islamic
fundamentalist government in Khartoum receive material and
moral support from other Islamic countries, while we receive no
support from the Christian world. But we will continue our
struggle for freedom, even if we are forsaken by Christendom.
We will die for our faith and we will die Christians. But
please help the wounded--we have nothing.''
In June of this year we were in the Nuba Mountains. We
testify that the government continues to destroy villages as
part of its publicly declared jihad against the Nuba people,
both Christian, Muslim and animist.
Civilians were attacked by low flying helicopter gunships,
hunting and mowing down women and children. There was
systematic destruction of homes, churches, crops, and livestock
by government troops and government backed Popular Defense, or
PDF, forces.
We conducted a meeting with community leaders, including
Muslims, from the various counties in the Nuba Mountains. They
gave details of recent attacks by these forces. Time only
permits one example.
Ibrahim Saeit from Murban County described how villages had
been attacked on the first of March of this year, including
Regife. Two elderly men were burnt in their huts; 3 other men
were captured and taken; 370 homes burnt; 371 cows stolen, pigs
and poultry killed, all crops burned. Now there are over 4,000
displaced people from Regife living in the bush, suffering from
severe hunger, and they suffer from cold in the rainy season.
The enemy used two helicopter gunships, killing one woman
in Kirka and wounding four other civilians. Three churches were
destroyed in this raid--one Roman Catholic, one Episcopalian,
and one belonging to the Sudanese Church of Christ.
I turn quickly to the second category of persecution,
related to this, which is the displacement of people from their
homelands in attempts to drive them to government-controlled
areas where they must renounce their Christian faith in order
to receive aid.
Many thousands of people have been driven from their homes.
We have witnessed them dying of starvation and disease around
us in regions throughout those areas of Sudan we visited. Many
others have to go to government-controlled garrisoned towns or
peace camps, where they are compelled to exchange Christian
names and allegiance to Christianity for Muslim names and
practices in order to receive food and medicine.
We received evidence of this policy from many people. I
just give one example from Loronyo in Eastern Equatoria. The
local commander told us: ``Loronyo had a population of about
6,000 before May 1, 1995. On that day, the government air force
began a campaign of indiscriminate bombing in and around
Loronyo. Forty-eight bombs were dropped on the outskirts of the
village. Later there were more direct bombardments. Women and
children were killed. The aim of the government is to force the
Lutuku people to go to Torit, to seek food and medicine,
because they have cutoff all humanitarian aid to this area.
Most people resist and stay, trying to survive scavenging. But
others are forced to go to survive.
When they arrive in Torit, they are forced to accept Muslim
names and practice Muslim rituals at a mosque in order to
receive food. In Torit, southern Christian women are routinely
raped and forced to marry Arab Muslims, even if they are
already married. Southern Christian boys are taken away from
their parents and placed in Torit's Koranic schools, where they
are indoctrinated into Islamicist ideology of the NIF regime.
In some cases, they are sent north in order to fight and are
never again seen by their families.
I move very quickly to the third dimension, slavery--the
abduction and enslavement of tens of thousands of black
Africans and their enforced Islamization.
CSI first discovered slavery when we visited northern Bahr-
El-Ghazal, the town of Nyamlell, in May, 1995. On March 25 of
that year, PDF forces had attacked Nyamlell, killing 82
civilians, enslaving 282 women and children, burning dwellings,
looting cattle and grain.
We have returned six times, visited other locations in
northern Bahr-El-Ghazal to obtain further evidence of slavery.
We have interviewed ex-slaves, slave traders, PDF officers, and
the families of people who are still enslaved. We have
accumulated an abundance of evidence to prove beyond doubt that
chattel slavery thrives and is actively encouraged by the
regime.
We have adopted a two-pronged strategy to try to achieve
the abolition of slavery. First, on the human and small-scale
level, is slave redemption. On our first visit to Nyamlell, we
discovered the possibility of redeeming slaves, reuniting them
with their families. This arose because of a local peace
agreement between Arabs from the north and the Dinka Africans
who live in the south. In order to obtain grazing and trading
rights, the Arab traders are allowed to graze and trade in
return for the return of slaves to the local people. And since
October, 1995, CSI has helped the local authorities to free
over 300 slaves.
But, more fundamentally, we have adopted a policy of
reconciliation between the Arabs and the Dinkas. We arranged
for a visit by the well known and well respected Muslim
religious leader, Mubarak El Fadil El Mahdi, who is also
General Secretary of the NDA, to visit the area. He met the
local Arabs, and in joint meetings with Arabs and Dinkas, he
persuaded the Arabs that this war is not a jihad and they are
being manipulated by the regime in Khartoum; that it is not in
their interest to fight, and to kill, and to enslave their
African brothers and sisters; and to go back and tell their
brothers in the north to stop undertaking these slave raids.
Consequently, I am happy to say there have been far fewer
slave raids since Mubarak El Mahdi's visit.
I finish and leave the topic of slavery with just one case
study because it illustrates the reality of the tragedy and the
abomination of slavery.
Mr. Apin Akot is from the village of Sokobat, near
Nyamlell. His village was raided in February, 1995. His
photograph is there in front of us. During that raid, he was
out looking after the cattle with their smallest child. His
wife and two daughters were taken and enslaved in the north.
With great courage, Mr. Apin Akot sold his cattle, took the
money he raised from the sale of his cattle, went north to look
for his wife and two daughters. He risked his life in doing so.
He found the Arab owner. He managed to negotiate the sale of
his wife and younger daughter, age 5. But the older daughter,
age 9, was nearly old enough to be a concubine. He did not have
enough money to negotiate the release of his older daughter. He
had to return, leaving that 9-year-old behind.
We were able to give him the money. With great courage he
returned and he was able to buy back his 9-year-old--now 10-
year-old--daughter just before she would have been circumcised
and forcibly married to an Arab owner.
That family is now reunited. Mr. Apin Akot says that every
day he wakes with joy, he feels a new man, because the family
are together again.
But we reckon there are tens of thousands of Africans still
enslaved in the north.
The final and few very brief words are in the final
category of the violations of human rights, the abduction and
forced conscription of boys and young men into the government
army, where many are subjected to enforced Islamization,
compelled to fight in the war against their own people.
We have met many young men who have escaped from the army
who describe how they have been forced to adopt Islamic names
and practices or suffer discrimination if they fail to comply.
These conscripts are usually put in the front line, where they
are among the first to die in military offensives. It is
estimated that many thousands of boys and young men, including
Muslims and particularly those from the Beja tribe, with whom I
have just been, have suffered this fate.
I conclude, Mr. Chairman, with one or two very brief
recommendations for consideration, if I might have the temerity
to suggest it, by the U.S. Government and the international
political community.
First, we in CSI welcome U.N. Security Council Resolutions
1044 and 1054 and we call upon the Security Council to impose,
if necessary, sanctions of increasing severity, including arms
and oil embargoes. We are pleased to hear of your own attempts
to try to limit financial transactions.
Second, CSI calls on the international community to insist
on access for human rights monitors to all areas of Sudan under
the direction of the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights
in Sudan. These monitors could investigate all violations of
human rights, including the persecution of Christians and those
of other faiths.
We call on the international community to insist on access
by humanitarian aid organizations to all parts of Sudan, to
ensure that aid is not used directly or indirectly to exploit
hunger and disease by forcing Christians to accept aid and to
become Muslims as part of that condition.
Finally, we call on the international community to
establish regular dialog with the NDA, the opposition groups,
as they develop policies to make peace and justice for all the
people of Sudan, according to the IGAD Declaration of
Principles.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of The Baroness Cox follows:]
Prepared Statement of Baroness Cox
Mr Chairman, Honourable Senators, I am grateful for the opportunity
to give evidence today of gross violations of Human Rights by the
Government of Sudan, with particular reference to religious
persecution. This evidence is based on first-hand experience of 15
visits including 4 this year, to many different areas in Sudan; the
Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and Eastern Upper Nile; and Eastern
Sudan between Kassala and the Red Sea.
I will conclude with some recommendations for consideration by all
concerned with Human Rights, with particular reference to religious
liberty in general and Christian persecution in particular.
Before I give this oral evidence, (fuller, written evidence is
available for reference), I should briefly introduce the Organisation
which has made this work possible:
1. Christian Solidarity International (CSI) is an
interdenominational Human Rights Organisation, focussing especially on
religious liberty, helping victims of repression, regardless of creed,
colour, nationality or gender.
CSI endeavours to be a voice for those who have no voice. We thus
try to reach those who are cut off from other aid organisations. Many
organisations, including working under the auspices of United Nations
organisations such as UNHCR and UNICEF, or the Red Cross, can only
visit people in need of help if they have an invitation from a
sovereign government. But repressive regimes victimising minorities
within their own borders may not give this permission. Therefore, these
minorities are bereft of both aid and advocacy. We believe it is part
of our Christian mandate to reach such people, who are among the most
isolated, outcast and deprived in the world. Our objectives on each
visit are:
to obtain evidence of violations of Human Rights and to
present that evidence to the international community;
to assess humanitarian need and to provide such assistance
as our resources allow;
to show solidarity with victims of repression and
persecution.
Mr Chairman, the situation in Sudan is very complex. Although the
primary victims of religious persecution have been the African
Christians of the South and the Nuba Mountains, many other groups,
including Muslims and animists are also suffering persecution.
This is because the National Islamic Front (NIF) totailitarian
military regime, which seized power by force in 1989, has declared a
jihad, not only against Sudanese Christians, but against all who oppose
it, including Muslims and animists, who are fighting for freedom from
repression, for survival of their culture, and for fundamental human
rights, including religious liberty.
Many Arab Muslims from the North, the majority of whom belong to
Opposition parties represented in the previous democratically elected
government, have suffered arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, torture and
extrajudicial killings.
On April 3 the NIF disrupted the 29th memorial festival of Al-Sayid
Ali Al-Merghani, blocking access to the celebration and using tear gas.
Many people were subsequently imprisoned.
A coalition between the major Islamic parties of the North and the
major black African opposition movement, the Sudan People's Liberation
Movement/Army (SPLM/A), has led to the National Democratic Alliance
(NDA).
The tragic war in Sudan must therefore not be seen simplistically
as a war between Christians and Muslims. It is a war between a
fundamentalist Islamic regime, with a totalitarian ideology, and its
own citizens; it has caused over 1.5 million deaths and led to the
displacement of over 5 million people from their homes and their lands.
It has inflicted incalculable suffering through brutal violations of
Human Rights, including the persecution of Christians, which reflects a
central feature of the NIF regime's policy of enforced Islamisation.
This policy of persecution of Christians is implemented by diverse
strategies, which can be summarised under 4 headings:
1. Military offensives against civilians, including aerial
bombardment by Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships; assaults by
ground troops in which people are killed or abducted, crops and
property, including churches, burnt; livestock stolen or slaughtered
and water supplies destroyed.
2. The displacement of over 5 million people from their homelands,
who have been forced to live by scavenging or to go to Government-
controlled garrison towns or `Peace Camps' where they are compelled to
exchange Christian names and allegiance for Muslim names and practices,
in order to receive essential food and medicine.
3. The abduction and enslavement of tens of thousands of black
Africans, and their enforced Islamisation.
4. The abduction and forced conscription of thousands of boys and
young men into the Government army, where many are subjected to
enforced Islamisation and compelled to fight in the war against their
own people. They are usually put in the front line, where they are
among the first to die in military offensives.
Mr Chairman, I will offer testimony on each of these aspects of
the persecution of Christians in Sudan today.
1. Military offensives against civilians
The Government has been undertaking a ferocious war against its own
people in Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile and
Eastern Sudan. It has received massive financial assistance from other
fundamentalist Islamic regimes which support terrorism. There have been
recent reports of donations from Iran to purchase weapons, including
tanks, MIG fighter aircraft and chemical weapons.
The Government denies that it bombs civilians, but I have spent
hours in foxholes during aerial bombardment of innocent civilians,
which inflicts death and injury; it also terrorises civilians and
drives them from their homelands into the bush, desert or mountains,
where they have to scavenge for food; often they have no access to
water supplies; and they suffer from cold with no shelter, clothes,
blankets or mosquito nets.
One response to these military offensives has been the
establishment of armed resistance, fighting for survival and, as many
see the situation, to resist the spread of fundamentalist Islam beyond
Sudan into other parts of Africa.
For example, on the way to the front-line near Kapoeta, in January
1994 we had to take refuge in a foxhole from an Antonov bomber which on
the previous day had killed 8 civilians and wounded three others. The
SPLA commander, Cdr. Cirillo, is a practising Catholic who does not
want to fight a war. He describes the NIF's war against the South as a
war to Islamise Sudan.
Before battle the Mujahadeen and other Islamic fundamentalist
zealots customarily shout and chant: ``We will force you to become
Muslims whether you want to or not.''
The Muslim fundamentalists cannot defeat us. We are firm as
Christians, and we will die for our faith. Our struggle is not against
Islam or against Muslims, but is against a fundamentalist regime that
wants to destroy our African heritage and faith. It is discouraging to
see the Islamic fundamentalist government in Khartoum receive material
and moral support from other Islamic countries, while we receive no
support from the Christian world. But we will continue our struggle for
freedom even if we are forsaken by Christendom. We will die for our
faith and we will die Christians. But please help my wounded--we have
nothing.
Earlier this year, we were in the Nuba Mountains, and we testify
that the Government continues to destroy villages as a part of its
publicly declared jihad against the Nuba people. Also, a group from the
Christian organisations Frontline Fellowship and Voice of the Martyrs
gave details of very recent attacks on villages, including bombardment
by Antonov bombers and low-flying helicopter gunships, and by ground
forces. They had been attacked by low-flying helicopter gunships and
described how the gunships hunted and mowed down women and children. We
also obtained evidence of systematic destruction of homes, churches,
crops and livestock by Government troops and Government-backed Popular
Defence Forces (PDF). Crucifixion of Christians has also been reported
by reliable sources.
But the Christians of the Nuba Mountains remain firm in their
faith, despite persecution. We met leaders of Nuba Mountain Christian
communities. An Episcopalian pastor, Reverend Barnaba, the head of the
Nuba Mountains Council of Churches, said that Christian communities
were very happy with our visit which showed Christian solidarity with
the churches there.
You have been sent by God's power. The churches in the Nuba
Mountains are carrying the cross of Christ in these days. They are
enduring many problems on account of the war being waged against them.
They want you, who have been sent by God, to be a voice for them and to
try to bring them some help in their dark days.
They are now surrounded by enemies in every direction.
The NIF regime has escalated its policies of burning churches and
church property, homes and everything which belongs to the people. To
make matters worse, they occupy the places where people go to fetch
water so that they cannot drink. They are simply doing this in order to
torture people and to force them to go to the Government held areas for
shelter, food and water. Despite all this, the people of the Nuba
Mountains will remain strong and will not go to the enemy side. They
will remain Christian and will work hard to survive this period of
darkness and suffering. The Bible tells us that if anyone suffers we
should all suffer, and if anyone rejoices we should rejoice with them.
We thank God that we are not alone despite our suffering. God has sent
us our brothers and sisters.
We also conducted a meeting with community leaders from the various
Counties in the Nuba Mountains. They gave details of recent attacks by
Government and PDF forces. Time only permits one example:
Ibrahim Saeit from Murban County. Villages which were attacked
included Regife village, on 1 March, when two elderly men were burnt in
their huts; three other men were captured (Hassan Jabura, Osman Jabrah,
and Abdullah Adam); 370 homes were burnt, 371 cows stolen, pigs and
poultry killed and all the crops burnt. Now there are over 4,000
displaced people from Regife living in the bush suffering from severe
hunger; they will also suffer from cold during the rainy season.
The enemy used two helicopter gunships killing one woman in Kirka
and wounding four other civilians; three churches were also destroyed
in the raid, one Roman Catholic, one Anglican and one belonging to the
Sudanese Church of Christ.
This leads to the second category of persecution:
2. The displacement of people from their homelands in attempts to drive
them to Government-controlled areas where they must renounce
their Christian faith in order to receive aid.
Many thousands of people have been driven from their homes. We have
witnessed them dying of starvation and disease in regions ranging from
Bahr-El-Ghazal in the west to Eastern Equatoria, Southern Blue Nile and
Eastern Upper Nile. Many others try to survive by fleeing to
Government-controlled garrison towns or `Peace Camps' where they are
compelled to exchange Christian names and allegiance for Muslim names
and practices, in order to receive supplies essential, such as food and
medicine.
We have received evidence of this policy from many people in all
these areas over the past 4 years. These examples come from Loronyo in
Eastern Equatoria in June 1995.
The local Commander (Cdr. Gathoth Gathkuoth) told us:
Loronyo had a population of about 6,000 before May 1, 1995. On that
day, the Government airforce began a campaign of indiscriminate bombing
in and around Loronyo. On May 1-2, 48 bombs were dropped on the
outskirts of the village. On May 13, a Government Antonov returned and
made a direct hit on the village, killing five women, two men and three
children . . . On the following day, another bomb was dropped on the
village. The well-constructed and beautifully maintained village is now
a ghost town. The local people have fled into the bush for fear of more
air raids . . .
(During times of peace, the industrious people of Loronyo are able
to lead a good life. The soil is fertile, the climate is favourable and
there is an abundance of game. . . .)
The current problems of Loronyo first became grave in 1992 when
nearby Torit was occupied by the Government army . . . The Government
has combined its bombing raids with a complete ban on the delivery of
humanitarian aid to the Loronyo. The last food delivery to Loronyo
arrived last year. The aim of the Government is to force the Lutuku
people to go to Torit in search of food and medicine. Most of the
people have so far resisted this temptation. They survive in the bush
by eating wild roots and leaves. But some have gone to Torit, where
they are forced to accept a Muslim name and practice Muslim rituals at
the mosque in order to receive food, some of which comes from western
donors via the UN Operation Life-line Sudan. Some also comes from the
radical Islamicist aid organisation, Dawa Islamyia. In Torit, southern
Christian women are routinely raped and forced to marry Arab Muslims,
even if already married. Southern Christian boys are often taken away
from their parents and placed in Torit's Koranic schools where they are
indoctrinated with the Islamicist ideology of the NIF government. In
some cases the boys are sent North as Islamic fundamentalist zealots,
never to be seen again by their families. The Christian churches in
Torit are severely restricted and are not allowed to distribute
humanitarian aid themselves. The weapon of hunger is a much greater
threat to the people of southern Sudan than the Government's arsenal.
``The people of Torit are Christians and believe in Jesus Christ as the
saviour. The NIF Government is now crucifying Christ here in Sudan.''
I offer one illustrative case, typical of countless others:
On May 19, 1994, two-year-old Thomas Obuka was alone in his hut
when a Government Antonov dropped a 600 lb on Loronyo. Debris from the
massive explosion hit the hut and set it alight. Thomas received severe
burns on his arms, stomach and legs before his mother rushed to his
rescue. The boy is in constant pain. If he survives, he will be badly
disfigured for life. The Government prevented the ICRC from evacuating
and treating Thomas and other wounded people from Loronyo. Tragedy is
not new to Thomas' mother, Matilda, who lost a leg in a mine explosion.
While trying to comfort her blistered son, Matilda told us:
I was in Torit together with my husband and two sons in 1992 when
it was occupied by Government troops. I was then separated from my
husband and forced to live as a wife of an Arab soldier. I was also
forced by this soldier to become a Muslim and I was given the name
Fatima. One of my sons, Okasah, was taken away from me by Dawa
Islamiya. He was placed in a Koranic school and given the name Ahmed.
One night my real husband and I tried to escape from Torit. We ran
through a mine field. My husband stepped on a mine and was blown up. I
stepped on a mine too. That is how I lost my leg. Since leaving Torit,
I have never seen 0kasah. He would be eight-years-old now, if he is
still alive.
3. The abduction and enslavement of tens of thousands of black
Africans, and their enforced Islamisation.
CSI had received unconfirmed reports of slavery on early visits to
Sudan. But when we visited Nyamlell in May 1995 we discovered slavery
as a flourishing and widespread institution. On March 25 1995 the PDF
forces attacked Nyamlell, killing 82 civilians; enslaving 282 women and
children; burning dwellings and looting cattle and grain.
CSI has returned 6 times and visited other locations in northern
Bahr-El-Ghazal to obtain further evidence of slavery. We have
interviewed slaves, slave traders, PDF officers and the families of
people who are still enslaved. We have accumulated an abundance of
evidence to prove beyond doubt that chattel slavery thrives in these
parts of Sudan and that the NIF regime actively encourages it. (See
reports of CSI visits to Sudan: May/June 95; August 95; October 95;
April/May 96; June 96 and October/November 96; March 1997). We estimate
that there are tens of thousands of slaves in Sudan today.
CSI has developed a two-pronged strategy to try to achieve the
abolition of slavery in Sudan.
(i) Slave redemption: On our first visit to Nyamlell we discovered
the possibility of redeeming slaves and reuniting them with their
families. This arose from a local peace agreement between Dinka chiefs
and some Arab Rezegat clans in southern Darfur. In return for cattle
grazing and trading rights, Arab traders facilitate the return of
slaves to their families for a price of 5 cows per slave (this price
has subsequently dropped to 2-3 head of cattle).
Since October 1995, CSI has given the local civil authorities
enough resources to free over 300 slaves.
(ii) Arab-Dinka reconciliation: CSI has worked to extend the local
agreement of 1990 by arranging a visit by the Muslim religious leader
Mubarak El Fadil El Mahdi, who is also General Secretary of the NDA and
other prominent Arab leaders, together with the prominent Dinka leader,
Bona Malwal. We arranged for them to meet the Rezegat and Misseriah
leaders and to address gatherings of Arabs and Dinkas.
These meetings enabled the Arab leaders to persuade their people
that this war is not a jihad and that it is in their interests to live
in peace with the Dinkas. The Dinka leaders assured their Arab brothers
that they would always be welcome in their midst.
Consequently this dry season there have been far fewer slave raids
in this area.
During our recent stay in Nyamlell, we had four happy meetings with
families whose children had been redeemed from slavery and who are now
reunited. (Viewers of the `Dateline' programme on Slavery in Sudan,
transmitted last December, or readers of press coverage in `The
Baltimore Sun' may remember some of the cases.) I give 2 examples:
(i) Mr. Apin Apin Akot, was looking after his herd of cattle, with
his smallest child, when the raiders came to his village of Sokobat, in
February 1995. His wife and 2 daughters, aged 5 and 9, were captured
and taken as slaves to the north. Apin Akot sold all his cattle and,
risking capture, torture and death, went to look for them. The owner
agreed to sell back his wife and younger daughter, but would not
release the 9-year-old: as she was old enough soon to be a concubine,
she was more `valuable' and the money available was not be sufficient.
So Apin Akot had to return to Nyamlell without her.
He had no more money or cattle to raise the money to save her. CSI
gave him the necessary sum and on this visit we were very happy to see
the entire family reunited. He told us:
Today I'm so happy and I cannot forget the help you gave me. I went
to northern Sudan to bring back my older daughter and now we are back
I'm so happy I forget all the difficulties. As soon as I received the
money from CSI, I left to go to the place where I knew she was
(Darafat, near Meiram in Kordofan) . . .
His daughter Akec Apin told her story:
When I was captured, my hands were tied with strong rope. All the
bad jobs were given to me--grinding dura in house and carrying water
from the well at night. I was just given leftovers on the plates for
food. If I was slow fetching the water, my master beat me with a big
stick (showing us scars on her face and legs--photos available). All
the family beat me.
She was told by her owner that this year she would be married to
his son. She was forced to join in Muslim prayers and wear Muslim
women's head-dress. Mr Apin Akot asks us to report this message to
those who gave money to help him:
You created me again, like God, giving me new life. When you gave
me the money and I got my daughter back, I felt as if I had been born
again.
(ii) Abuk Marow Keer, a young mother who had lost her sight through
river blindness. Her two children, Abuk Deng aged 7 and Deng Deng aged
5, were abducted during the slave raid on Nyamlell on March 25 1995.
She was also captured with her mother and raped during the beginning of
the journey to the North. However, probably due to her blindness, she
was discarded by the raiders with her mother. They returned to Nyamlell
without her two children.
On previous visits we met these unhappy women. On the previous
occasion we gave them money to redeem her children. It was a great joy
on this visit to see them reunited. Abuk Marow Keer told us:
I am very happy indeed to get my children back. I am so happy, I
could dance but I do not have the eyes to see. You paid for bringing my
children back. Your money made it possible.
Her brother had gone to a place north of Daien and found her boy
with an Arab master who released him for the money CSI had given him.
She also obtained information of the whereabouts of her daughter Abuk,
who was being kept in a village called Gomlias by a slave master called
Abu Gassim. Abuk would have been circumcised this year and then used as
a concubine.
In March, we also visited Manyiel, a market town about 3 hours'
walk away, where Arab traders often bring children from the North, to
sell them back to their families. We were welcomed by the local SPLA
Commander who said he was surprised how fast Christianity was growing:
Faith seems to be strengthening because of suffering. Even if we
are killed and our children are taken from us, we will continuing
fighting for the right to live in our land and in the long-run we will
achieve our objectives.
We also met Christian Leaders in Manyiel. A Roman Catholic
Catechist, William Aryuon, gave this message to the Western Church:
We are very happy that the Christian Church in the West and in the
world at large can see us in our sad situation and continues to visit
us and to tell our story. If people like you visit us, this encourages
us and strengthens our faith. We have many problems, including disease,
lack of essential supplies for our church, and education is a
fundamental problem. We need books, including English text books. We
are suffering from nakedness, but that is a secondary priority.
However, we do need blankets and mosquito nets for the rainy season. We
are grateful that you have come here to show Christian solidarity, to
share our difficulties, to redeem our children, to bring medicines, and
to encourage Christianity in this place.
There had never been a church here before this war. But always in
crises people look for solutions. Our problem has been the
fundamentalist Muslim regime which has tried to force us to convert to
Islam. We therefore responded by building a church and now people come
to the church. Also now you have visited us, what we were doing and
saying has become meaningful to people. They now understand Christian
solidarity and the meaning of the international Christian community.
In June this year, we returned to Barh-El-Ghazal and were
disappointed to find that there had been 2 more slave raids, on April
24 and May 16, in Marial Bai, an area about 2 hours' walk from Manyiel.
Local people claimed about 2,000 PDF militia came; in the first raid 3
villagers were killed; in the second, 24 local people were killed and 3
more subsequently died of injuries; 67 slaves were taken.
They also burnt churches, schools, homes and crops and took as much
livestock with them as they could.
One villager, Alek Bak, described the fateful day:
We heard the enemy coming. We all ran in different directions. My
husband and 2 of my children escaped. But the enemy took away my 13-
year-old son Piol and my 9-year-old daughter Abuk. They stole or burnt
everything we owned. My home has been burnt down. All our food,
clothes, books and tools are gone as well as 45 cows. I have had no
news of my children. I don't know how we will survive . . .
4. The abduction and forced conscription of boys and young men into the
Government army
Many are subjected to enforced Islamisation and compelled to fight
in the war against their own people. We have met many young men who
have escaped from the army, who have described how they were forced to
adopt Islamic names and practices, or suffered discrimination if they
failed to comply. These conscripts are usually put in the front line,
where they are among the first to die in military offensives. It is
estimated that many thousands of boys and young men have suffered this
fate.
Conclusion
The Government continues to try to transform by force the
ethnically and religiously diverse country into an Islamic state,
against the wishes of the vast majority of its population, both North
and South. This policy involves systematic persecution of Christians
and is tantamount to attempted genocide of black African communities.
The Government is also persecuting Muslims and animists who oppose its
policies.
Recommendations
1. For consideration by the U.S. Government and the international
political community:
(i) CSI welcomes the UN Security Council Resolutions 1044 and 1054
and calls upon the Security Council to impose, if necessary, sanctions
of increasing severity, including arms and oil embargoes.
(ii) CSI also calls on the international community to:
Insist on access for human rights monitors to all areas of
Sudan, under the direction of the UN Special Rapporteur for
Human Rights in Sudan. These monitors could investigate all
violations of Human Rights, including the persecution of
Christians and those of other faiths;
Insist on access by humanitarian aid organisations to all
parts of Sudan to ensure that aid is not used to support
directly or indirectly the policies of exploitation of hunger
and disease, by forcing Christians to accept aid as a condition
of becoming Muslims.
Establish regular dialogue with the NDA as it develops
policies to promote peace and justice for all the people of
Sudan, according to the IGAD Declaration of Principles.
(iii) We welcome legislation which will draw attention to the
importance of religious liberty and to violations of this fundamental
freedom; which will also encourage governments to protect religious
liberty for all people.
2. For Christian Churches:
The first priority identified by Christians suffering
persecution in Sudan is always prayer. We urge Christian
churches everywhere to pray regularly for the persecuted church
in Sudan and throughout the world.
Prayer without deeds is dead, as love without action is
dead. Therefore, we urge Christians to respond to the
persecuted churches' requests for aid, including Bibles, food,
medicine, clothing and educational resources.
There is also a need to show solidarity with those suffering
persecution. Wherever possible, it is important to visit those
who are afflicted. Those who do visit, will return enriched and
inspired by the faith, courage, dignity and witness to
Christian love shown by the persecuted church. As the exiled
Roman Catholic Bishop of El Obeid said during a visit to
Southern Sudan: ``I came, I saw, I heard, I touched and I am
enriched.''
I leave the last word with a message from the Christian community
in Southern Blue Nile, where the people are suffering from a scorched
earth policy, which has displaced 50 thousand people who are living--
and dying--scavenging for roots and nuts.
When we visited them in January, Elea Ullam, a Roman Catholic Lay
Leader, gave us a message which speaks for all the persecuted
Christians of Sudan today.
Please tell people in other countries: we Christians will never
give up our faith, no matter what we must suffer. What we expect from
the Church in the West is prayers for Christian unity and solidarity
with us.
Mr Chairman, thank you.
Senator Ashcroft. I thank you, Baroness Cox.
Reverend Marc Nikkel is an Episcopal mission worker in the
Sudanese Diocese of Bor. He has travelled a long way to be with
us this morning and I am pleased to have an opportunity to
welcome his testimony. I would ask that he include in his
testimony a statement of how he could pass security with those
devices which are with him on the table.
That is just an aside, Reverend Nikkel. I am pleased to
welcome your testimony.
STATEMENT OF THE REVEREND MARC NIKKEL, EPISCOPAL MISSION
WORKER, EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF SUDAN, DIOCESE OF BOR, NAIROBI,
KENYA
Reverend Nikkel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We were brought
up with a security guard so that they could be shown to your
people here and under my care here as well.
I am very grateful for your invitation to be with you. I
first went to Sudan in 1981. I have lived in Sudan for 9 years
and am deeply grateful for the growing awareness of the human
rights abuses, the religious oppression in Sudan in the last
couple of years during this administration. So I thank you for
this opportunity.
I would like to address something of the nature of the
church in Sudan that I have lived with for these last years,
what has been proclaimed in some areas the fastest growing
church in Africa, the fastest growing church in the Anglican
Communion, and it might be parallel to other denominations as
well, a vital, deeply rooted church that is part of people's
identities. I think it is so easy for us from our Western
perspective to conceive as something that has been introduced
from outside that remains a foreign implant. That is not so in
Sudan.
It is difficult to bring statistics to the growth that has
taken place in these years given the isolation of various
communities, the pervasiveness of this growth in very obscure
places, where lay leadership has emerged without expectation.
But in these years it is something very worthy of note.
In part, it is obviously conversion because of the
oppressiveness of the present regime in Khartoum, its coercion,
the subjection of people who are not of the particular ilk of
the NIF, as we have heard. But it is also a deeply subjective
experience of the Christian narrative of the Gospel as
traditional structures have been broken down in these years, as
societies--we have heard, what, 4 or 5 million--have been
displaced within the borders of Sudan, with massive loss of
life. Traditional social structures as well as religious
structures have been torn to shreds in these years.
The divinities anchored to geographical areas have often
been uprooted. It is in this period of upheaval that
Christianity has become such a powerful emblem, not only for
solidarity between diverse peoples, those who are educated,
aware of the broader context, but people within rural areas for
whom this has been survival. It has provided within the church
new structures for social organization, for a relationship to
divinity that is over all.
So when we are talking about religion, it is not perhaps
the sort of segmented thing that we in the West often think of,
but something that is pervasive. It is integral to the society,
the survival of Sudanese societies in many contexts during this
period.
Perhaps if, during the Missionary Era, there was one thing
that was done very right, it was the use of vernacular language
so that faith has been expressed in the vernacular, songs
composed in the midst of this upheaval. All missionaries were
expelled in 1964 and with that, people with little training
went to the bush with what knowledge they had, what vernacular
scriptures they had, interpreted and reinterpreted their
struggle for survival, their suffering in these terms.
So what I want to say is, when we speak of religious
persecution in Sudan, it may be something very different from
what many of us would assume--a context where culture,
ethnicity, language and spiritual allegiance are of a piece,
deeply rooted together. And so, if we see that, we speak in
terms of the acts of the NIF. We have heard so vividly about
eradicating not only religion, but it is the ethnic identity
that is the objective here. It is as true of Christians as of
people of traditional culture, traditional religion as well.
I think of Bor area, where I spent a great deal of time and
the great raids that took place in 1991. Yes, those were
factional, those were inter-ethnic, those were inter-tribal.
But they were funded, they were encouraged, cultivated, armed
from the north. I think of the great devastation that has taken
place in northern Bahr-El-Ghazal as well.
There is the annihilation of cattle for traditional
cultures, which are the heart of the sacrificial system, the
spiritual system, the economy, the cohesion of community, the
sense of well-being. Striking at that heart of society is an
attempt to eradicate a cultural identity.
So there is a cohesiveness here that I would hope we can
comprehend in the Sudanese context.
I have given several anecdotes and several examples of
oppression in the testimony that I have submitted. I won't go
with those now. But I would like to refer to crosses and maybe
also to the image of jihad. Some people have asked me is the
war in the south a counter-jihad on the part of Christians. No,
it is not that--not in any way. People are defending their
land. They are defending their right to their freedom of
choice.
These crosses (indicating) have remarkable stories and in
some ways they are an evolution, a transformation of the spears
that were central to ritual traditionally. If you go to some
areas, you will find hundreds, even thousands of crosses being
held by Christians. This one is particularly poignant. For all
of these, the brass is the refuse of war, of bullets. Obviously
there is a bullet shell there (indicating), and an RPG tail
spinner on the head of this cross (indicating), a rocket
propelled grenade tail spinner.
Some months ago, I asked the fellow who had commissioned
this what it meant for him. I would like this community here to
hear the witness of one man, spoken in his own language, in the
Jieng language, which I translate into English.
Jesus came into the world as a man of righteousness. But he
was persecuted, and suffered, and put to death on a cross. He
brought the good news, but was crucified with the spikes that
nailed him down. In the same way, the Gospel has come into our
land in southern Sudan, and we suffer for his word, that which
we have accepted. Our children are raided and made into slaves
because of it. We are put to death because of it. Our cattle
have all been raided because of it. We suffer starvation and
are scattered across the earth because of it. All those who
receive the Gospel will suffer and so do we.
In this day the RPG--the rocket propelled grenade--is used
as a tool of killing against our peoples as certainly as spikes
were used to crucify Jesus on the cross. Still we carry within
us the hope that we will ultimately have victory through the
cross of Christ. It is a cross that will judge between us and
the aggressors that will seek to kill us. I want people of the
West to see the cross brought to them from Sudan because it is
the cross they once brought to us. I want them to see that we
are people like them, and this is the suffering it has brought
us. See this cross. We have given up our old divinities and
virtually everything we possess and we have taken up the cross.
Pray for us that we will remain crucified upon the cross, that
we will remain faithful. We are forever stuck to the cross.
That is indigenous theology out of the grassroots in
southern Sudan. There are many other vernacular witnesses we
could add to that. But I hope you hear in my words something of
the integration of all of life over and against a government
set on eradicating peoples, their cultures, their language, and
their faith.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Reverend Nikkel follows:]
Prepared Statement of Reverend Marc R. Nikkel
Personal background. I am grateful for this opportunity to speak
before you, on behalf of Sudanese peoples who've become part of my life
during the past sixteen years. I bring greetings from many of our
Bishops, priests and women's workers, residing within the war zone, as
well as in displacement and refugee camps.
I first went to Sudan in 1981 as an appointee of the Episcopal
Church, USA, to serve as a teacher in the seminary of the Episcopal
Church of the Sudan at Mundri. My work there was terminated when, in
1987, I was one of three Americans abducted by the Sudanese Peoples'
Liberation Army (SPLA) and held for two months. This experience,
trekking eastward among thousands displaced by war, served to deepen
and solidify my commitment to the peoples of Sudan. After completing a
doctorate in the history of Christianity among the Jieng (Dinka), I
returned to Sudan to work as advisor for theological education under
the Episcopal Diocese of Bor. Our present work involves extended
periods in Upper Nile Province, one of the regions most devastated by
war, as well as in displacement and refugee camps along the Sudan-
Kenyan border.
Character of the Church in Sudan
Unprecedented church growth. The past fourteen years have seen not
only massive losses of life and enormous population movements in Sudan,
but the growth of Christian churches unprecedented in modern history,
indeed, since the rise of the Nubian Church in the first millennium.
During the past decade the Sudanese Church has been described as the
fastest growing Church in Africa, and the Episcopal Church of the Sudan
(ECS) specifically, as the fastest growing Church in the Anglican
Communion, a trend paralleled in other denominations. While this refers
particularly to the diverse language groups of southern Sudan, large
northward migrations have made Christian communities increasingly
prominent in the northern context, nor have the Nuba Mountains been
untouched by the Churches' growth.
Undeniably, the impulse to embrace Christianity is, in part, a show
of defiance against the government of the National Islamic Front (NIF),
a regime which has proven itself ruthless in its use of social
engineering, ethnic cleansing, forced Islamization, and genocide, in
its attempts to impose a distinctive, politicized form of pseudo-Islam.
Certainly, one motivation for conversion is political defiance among
otherwise disenfranchised peoples.
It is also, however, a profoundly subjective response to the
Christian message amidst the unprecedented social, cultural and
religious destabilization traditional societies have undergone during
the past decade. The processes, sequence, and momentum through which
Sudanese peoples have imbibed Christianity vary greatly. For the
majority it has involved a fundamental reassessment of communal
heritage and identity in theological, spiritual, and moral terms. In
many regions tradition is not being discarded but, through indigenous
impulses, being transformed and synthesized to facilitate survival in a
radically altered world. With the erosion of the social and moral
structures in many indigenous societies the Church is assuming an
increasingly prominent role in moral leadership both within civil
society and in local government.
An indigenous and vernacular faith. Spokesmen for the NIF describe
Christianity as an oppressive, counterfeit religion cultivated by
Western imperialists for the subjugation of African peoples. On the
contrary, Christianity has become integral to the identity of many
Sudanese, and during the present era often plays a part in their
cultural, linguistic, and ethnic survival. Repeatedly, during the forty
years since independence, the churches have served as places of
cultural cohesion, affirmation, and preservation. One of the most
important factors in the expansion and indigenization of Christianity
in Sudan has been the fact that Catholic and Protestant missions
cultivated vernacular languages. While Christianity helped to unify the
diverse peoples of the South, written vernacular language encouraged
independent thought, indigenous initiative, and authority at the grass
roots.
With the expulsion of missionaries from southern Sudan in 1964
small, fragile Christian communities were largely severed from external
support. Yet, vernacular Christianity became in many regions a tool of
the Church's self-preservation and propagation. Amidst great suffering,
often hidden from combat in rural areas and in exile, the vernacular
church proliferated, a process, which continues with still greater
intensity today. The moral and social values of the Church, its
scriptures and liturgies, its modes of healing and reconciliation, have
met with and been transformed by indigenous thought. Contrary to
expectation, the churches have served, in Sudan's postcolonial era,
more to protect and hallow African ethnic identities than to suppress
them. Though under assault with the destruction of churches and the
withholding of services to non-Muslims, vernacular Christianity plays a
profound role in reinforcing identity, and providing solidarity for the
disenfranchised in today's war zones and displacement camps.
Given this evolution Christianity is intimately linked with the
cultures, languages and ethnicities of those who embrace it. Not only
is this integration basic to Sudanese Christian identity, it is also
assumed by NIF government authorities. The jihad, or `holy war'
declared by the government is not simply directed against Christians,
but against Muslims and people of traditional African religion, any who
do not bow to the politicized pseudo-Islam it propagates. Women and
children who have been abducted and used as forced labor and as
concubines include traditionalists as well as Christians, all members
of subjugated ethnic groups. The boys who have been forcibly placed in
Islamic khalwas to undergo Islamization and militarization are from
traditional as well as Christian roots. Religious suppression is but
one facet of the broad spectrum of human rights abuses presently being
perpetrated in Sudan.
Religious Persecution and Forced Islamization
The examples of religious persecution which follow are taken from
the narratives of friends who experienced or observed these events.
They are from both northern and southern Sudan, and all have occurred
within the past year.
Suppression of vernacular language. In contrast to the affirmation
of ethnic identities discussed above, a succession of Khartoum based
regimes have sought to enforce the study of Arabic language as a
component of Islamization. In its programs of social engineering and
ethnic cleansing no regime has suppressed vernacular languages more
virulently than the NIF. A recent narrative tells of a literate
Christian in Northern Sudan who had obtained a primer in his own
vernacular language. When he returned to his home area the primer was
found on his person by security police and he was killed. The primer
was perceived as a tool for cultivating vernacular language, indigenous
culture and Christianity in defiance of the Government's determination
to eradicate them. The propagation of vernacular language can be a
capital offense in contemporary Sudan.
Persecution focused on Church Leaders. Pastors who reside in show
places like Khartoum may sometimes be given a degree of immunity, but
those who are hidden from international view in government controlled
areas often undergo sustained intimidation. Indeed, some church leaders
in Khartoum are warned against visiting churches in their home areas on
threat of death lest they offer support and nurture to vulnerable
people.
Pastor James (not his real name) is a respected Protestant minister
in a Southern garrison town, noteworthy for the multi-ethnic
congregation he led, and the good relations he maintained with other
churches. On the 10th of July, 1997, his home was visited by NIF
security police and violently ransacked. At midnight armed men appeared
again, taking him into the night, one of about thirty people abducted
by authorities near the same time. Pastor Alex was held for twenty
days, and beaten and tortured continually. During no time in this
period was he interrogated and no charge was ever raised against him.
During detention his hands were tightly bound such that he was unable
to use them for two months following his release. Several of his teeth
were knocked out, his ribs broken, and kidneys damaged. There appears
to be no reason for his detention and torture apart from his role as an
observable church leader, respected as a man of reconciliation and
solidarity in the Southern community.
Execution of Muslims who convert to Christianity. As in other
Muslim countries, it is illegal to convert from Islam to another
religion. Nonetheless, there has been a small but consistent movement
of Muslims toward Christian faith. This occurs primarily among Nuba who
have been alienated by NIF policies in suppression of their people, but
also includes Muslims of other backgrounds. There are numerous accounts
of converts who have been killed or `disappeared' under government
action. One young northerner became a Christian, and was reported to
the authorities by his own family. He was apprehended by government
security, beaten, and shot. Thinking him dead, his body was dumped down
a large conduit that empties into the Nile River. There it floated
becoming entangled in fishing nets. Surprisingly he was not eaten by
crocodiles, but was found the following morning by fishermen and taken
to hospital. He now works as a Christian evangelist in villages of the
north, his family unaware of his whereabouts or activities.
The destruction of church buildings. A succession of Sudanese
governments have withheld land or building permits for the construction
of churches. Nonetheless, people in shantytowns and displacement camps
repeatedly struggle to erect rakubas, simple shelters made of mats to
serve as churches, community gathering places, and schools.
Occasionally more substantial buildings have been constructed.
Repeatedly they have been destroyed, often bulldozed without warning.
Since May, 1997, at least seven churches have been destroyed, two in
Jebel Aulia displacement camp, two in the Khartoum suburb of Kadalona,
and three in Nuba Mountains, one of these being an ECS cathedral
recently built of permanent materials. Within the ECS compound in
Omdurman police recently took control by force of arms of an area used
as a children's center on land that has been church property since
colonial times.
Statement of James Lual concerning the RPG Cross
Following are the words of an evangelist from Upper Nile Province.
His words, translated from Jieng language, reflect the attitudes of
many southern Sudanese Christians.
Jesus came into the world as a man of righteousness, but he
was persecuted and suffered and put to death on a cross. He
brought the good news but was crucified with the spikes that
nailed him down. In the same way, the gospel has come to our
land in southern Sudan, and we suffer for his Word, that which
we've accepted. Our children are raided and made into slaves
because of it. We are put to death because of it. Our cattle
have all been raided because of it. We suffer starvation and
are scattered across the earth because of it. All those who
receive the gospel will suffer . . . and so do we. In this day
the RPG (rocket propelled grenade) is used as a tool of killing
against our people as certainly as spikes were used to crucify
Jesus on the cross. Still, we carry within us the hope that we
will ultimately have victory through the cross of Christ. It is
the cross that will judge, between us and the aggressors who
seek to kill us. I want people of the West to see the cross
brought to them from Sudan because it is the cross they once
brought to us. I want them to see that we are people like them
and this is the suffering it has brought us. See this cross. We
have given up our old divinities, and virtually everything we
possess, and we have taken up the cross alone. Pray for us that
we will remain crucified upon the cross, that we will remain
faithful. We are forever stuck to the cross.
In closing, I would request the solidarity of the government of the
United States with the peoples of Sudan, not only Christians, but
people of every faith tradition who are the object of religious
coercion, ethnic cleansing or genocide. Indigenous religious leaders
need to be assured of our compassion and will to positive action.
Recognized leaders whose authority has been negated or denied in their
own homeland need to be given avenues of approach and the fight to
initiate requests for constructive measures on behalf of their people.
Senator Ashcroft. Thank you, Reverend Nikkel.
I am pleased now to have the opportunity to introduce Ms.
Jemera Rone--and I hope I have pronounced that properly--who is
the counsel at Human Rights Watch and a noteworthy Sudan
scholar in her own right.
I want to thank you for appearing and look forward to your
testimony. At the conclusion of your remarks, we should have a
few moments for an exchange.
STATEMENT OF JEMERA RONE, COUNSEL, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ms. Rone. Thank you very much for inviting me here today. I
am Jemera Rone from Human Rights Watch. Thank you also for
conducting this hearing on Sudan and religious persecution and
human rights abuses. For very long, Sudan has been simply out
of the public's eye and hearings like this do so much to bring
it to the public consciousness.
I would like to submit my written testimony and also append
to it a chapter from a report that I wrote last year, the
chapter dealing with religious freedom in Sudan. It is much
longer than my testimony and far too long to read this morning.
Senator Ashcroft. The committee is pleased to receive it
and will make it a part of the written record along with the
submissions of other witnesses.
Ms. Rone. I would like to speak first about religious
oppression and violation of civil and political rights, sort of
a little different from what the other witnesses have been
speaking about, which are the very gross, physical abuses that
occur in the course of the war--the killings, the slavery--
which they have covered so eloquently.
I, myself, had an experience in Sudan when I attempted to
meet with the Roman Catholic Archbishop Juba, that illustrated
for me what type of oppression people live under but that is
not yet physical abuse.
The Sudan security absolutely refused to allow me to speak
to the Archbishop in private. They had him under their eye
every move he made. They did not want him to talk to foreign
visitors, especially not human rights people, because they were
afraid of what he would tell them.
I very much wanted to hear what he had to say. But he, of
course, could not speak freely in front of these two security
agents who came into his office when we were both there. They
knew we were going to be there and they refused to leave, even
though we both asked them very politely to leave.
I then protested and said I had never been in any country
investigating human rights on any mission where government
officials would not let me meet privately with a religious
official.
They were totally unmoved and, as a result of my protest, I
was put under virtual house arrest and my visit to Juba was
cutoff. I was put on the next plane out.
This is the daily bread that the religious community--I
should say of the Christian religious community--in Sudan has
to face in the government controlled areas of Sudan, southern
Sudan and also in the north. It is particularly bad in the
garrisoned towns, such as Juba, which is the largest town in
the south and it is under government control.
These are a type of oppression and violation of civil
liberties that are targeted directly at people that the
government thinks oppose them on religious grounds, political
grounds, ethnic grounds, whatever. The gross abuses that are
occurring in the war are often of an indiscriminate nature, I
would say. There are raids, open season, on anyone who lives in
a particular area that the government happens to think is
affiliated with the rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation
Army.
They are giving carte blanche to their soldiers and the
militia to go in and devastate the civilian population that
they think is supporting the rebels. As their reward, their war
booty, they are allowed to take prisoners, that is, slaves,
women and children, loot the grain, take the cattle, take
anything of value.
This is the way that the government allows soldiers and
militia to be paid for their work for the government. It is an
incentive for them to go on these raids.
Of course they take women and children as slaves because
those are the most vulnerable and it is very hard for them to
escape. The grown men, if they find them, they kill them. The
women and children are usually more easily intimidated and then
taken far away with them to the north.
I had the opportunity through an underground that exists in
the north to speak to some of these children who had been taken
as slaves and who had managed to escape through the help of the
underground or through their own devices. Sometimes when these
boys are old enough--that is, 10, 11, or 12--they run away and
they get away from their masters. But many of them are not able
to do that.
Their stories are very pathetic. They often do not remember
the raid in which they were captured because it was so
traumatic and sometimes family members were killed, and so
forth.
But this is one of the more gross abuses in the war about
which we have already talked.
I want to emphasize how much I appreciate the description
you had of the conflict in Sudan. It is very complex and,
obviously, you touched on many, on all of the facets of the
war.
If you listen to the government rhetoric, I find it is
quite misleading about what I think is actually going on in
Sudan. The government attempts to cloak itself in the flag of
Islam for purposes of garnering support inside the country
among the Muslim majority and for the purpose of garnering
support in the Arab and Islamic world and from wealthy
individuals who will help them finance the war effort.
Their rhetoric, their Islamic rhetoric, is extreme. They
exhort--government officials, the head of State, the President
exhort large crowds, addressing them as Muslims, encouraging
them to go on a holy war and promising them that if they die,
they will be martyred and will go to heaven and have the
rewards promised in the Koran.
These are government officials. This is a very polarized
discourse, of course.
The war is not as simple as all that, however, because
there are Christians and Muslims on both sides of the conflict.
There are believers in traditional African religion on both
sides of the conflict. Part of this is because the government
has a very pernicious policy of divide and rule and has had
some success with this policy.
This is a policy more directed at different ethnic groups,
at polarizing people according to their tribal origins, rather
than their religion.
In particular, Sudan is an extremely complex country in
terms of ethnic and religious composition. There is no one
ethnic group that is in the majority. Arabs are about 40
percent of the population, that is, people who identify
themselves as Arabs. They will belong to many different tribes.
The largest single people or tribe, as we would say, is the
Dinka. They are about 3 million--is a guess--out of about 26
million or 27 million people, only about 12 percent of the
population belonging to one tribe.
They are a southern people. The Dinka are in the leadership
of the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army, and, therefore,
the government has conducted a campaign of trying to vilify the
Dinka, unfortunately, and riling up everyone, Muslims as well
as southerners, against what they call Dinka domination.
They do this as a part of their training in the People's
Defense Force Camps, which are government militias that are
extremely politicized in their education. They give a little
bit of military training, but most of their training is about
the holy war and of a political nature designed to encourage
people to volunteer to go to the south on this holy crusade
against the Dinka as much as for a holy war.
I have heard about this type of training from people who
are required to go to these camps. They require government
civil servants to go. They also require Dinka government civil
servants to go. They have heard this talk against their own
people. It is very difficult for them and some of them protest.
They lose their jobs, get thrown out of the civil service, and
are considered enemies of the government.
In addition to this really pernicious government policy of
trying to divide people on ethnic grounds, there are other
reasons for southerners, non-Muslims, and Christians to be
fighting actually on the side of the government and against the
rebel SPLA. Some of those have to do with internal fights,
political power struggles. Some of them have to do with human
rights abuses which the SPLA has committed because in some
cases they have not really respected the human rights of the
people in whose territory they are fighting. They have
recruited child soldiers and there has been a backlash on that.
But there is also a lot of power struggle going on as in
any movement.
In fact, the second largest people or tribe in the south is
the Nuer. They are mostly fighting on the government side right
now.
What we fear might happen in this conflict is that the
government will step back and let the southerners fight against
each other and remove the religious element, at least
ostensibly, from the conflict. Some government officials have
actually said to me well, if we were not there, it would be
another Rwanda, just these tribes fighting each other.
That is why I think it is important to keep the broad
context of the war in mind, that the government is capable of
just this kind of manipulation.
This actually happened in the killings that Marc Nikkel was
referring to in 1991. It was southerner against southerner.
Also in 1993 there was a very bad rash of struggles from
southerner to southerner, fomented by the government, of
course. But it was very real and very hard on the civilian
population, nevertheless.
I want also to underline what others have said, that the
fact is there are Muslims who also fight in the SPLA. So the
SPLA itself is fighting not for a religious State. They are
fighting for a united, secular Sudan. That is what they have
been saying since the beginning of their formation.
The Muslims who are fighting with them originally were from
the Nuba Mountains in the center, where half the people are
Muslim and the other half are Christian. Now they have been
joined by independent Muslim forces, independent of the SPLA,
Muslims who formed their own forces, the Beja, as Baroness Cox
has mentioned, and also the Sudan Alliance Forces, who are not
only Muslim but are also Arab.
So you have a north-north conflict now as well, to boot,
which severely undercuts the ability of the government to wrap
itself in the flag of Islam. But they try, nevertheless.
I want to followup on one of Marc Nikkel's comments about
conversion. The south, in my experience, is not a majority
Christian area; it is a majority of traditional African
religions. People are reaching for Christianity there and also
in the north, where they are very badly treated as second class
citizens, as a bulwark against the onslaught of this Islamic
northern thrust into their communities and into their lives.
The British traditionally administered family law in three
separate courts. One was for Muslims, one was for Christians,
and one was for people with traditional African religions, that
is, customary law, which is quite different from the Muslim or
the Christian law. Particularly, customary law permits
polygamy, which is a practice in the south, which is perfectly
acceptable under that law but yet is contrary to Christian
doctrine and also, once you get past four wives, it is also
contrary to Muslim doctrine.
I say this to underline the complexity of the south and the
diversity of its peoples.
The militant Islamists have always tried to say that
Christianity is a foreign influence and that people who are
Christians are not really Sudanese, and, therefore, that there
is a large conspiracy against Sudan by the western Christian
world, designed to destroy an Arab Islamic State. That is the
basis on which they make their appeal to other countries in the
Arab and Muslim world.
My caution or hesitation about focusing on religious
persecution to the exclusion of all else is that this gives
them more ammunition for the fire. It is not true that
Christians in Sudan are foreigners. They have been treated by
this government as foreigners, but they are as Sudanese as
anyone else. The clergy is almost entirely Sudanese.
But yet, this is something that the government I am sure
will try to make more ammunition of, to rally forces inside
Sudan and abroad. I was glad to hear in the remarks of everyone
here today that they view this conflict as much more than just
a religious conflict and that there is here broad recognition
of the ethnic, linguistic, cultural, regional, and other
elements in the war.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Rone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jemera Rone
Introduction
I am Jemera Rone, counsel and Sudan researcher at Human Rights
Watch. I thank you for conducting this hearing on religious persecution
and human rights in Sudan, and for inviting me to testify.
Human Rights Watch supports sanctions in principle as a means of
bringing about human rights compliance, and we consider a government as
thoroughly abusive as that of Sudan to be a prime candidate for
sanctions. We fear that sanctions imposed solely because of religious
persecution might backfire, however, from two directions: the
government of Sudan and a US administration intent on defeating the
purpose of the legislation.
Based on the Sudan government's track record, we can envision that
it might try to take advantage of religious persecution sanctions in
two ways:
(a) to pit Sudanese Muslims against non-Muslims, by claiming
that foreigners seek to give non-Muslims a privileged status
inside Sudan (despite the fact that the bill includes religious
discrimination against Muslims); and
(b) to garner sympathy for Sudan in the Arab and Islamic
world and elsewhere as a state which is victimized by the
powerful, western Christian world, solely because it is a
religious Islamic state--religious persecution in the reverse,
if you will.
The current government of Sudan uses every opportunity to present
itself as an underdog that deserves the political, financial and
military support of Arab and Islamic countries.
Imposing sanctions solely on the basis of religious persecution
would inadvertently give any US administration intent on avoiding
sanctions on Sudan--or elsewhere--the opportunity to claim that the
human rights abuses are not religious abuses. For instance, Sudan is
already subject to multiple sanctions related to the government's
support for terrorist groups and having a civilian government ousted by
a military coup in 1989. One of the few remaining sanctions that can be
applied is a ban on US investors doing business in Sudan, the so-called
Occidental loophole (arising from Department of Commerce regulations
under the anti-terrorism legislation). However, applying sanctions on
account of religious persecution alone, instead of on account of the
wholesale violation of human rights, still provides wiggle room for an
executive branch eager to promote business interests. Many of the
grossest abuses are related to the war and not to the religious
affiliation of the victim. The way to better assure protection of
religious rights is to impose sanctions on account of all abuses,
including religious persecution.
Rights Abuses and the Civil War in Sudan
Sudan is Africa's largest country--2.5 million square kilometers--
approximately one-third the size of the continental US; the Nile flows
through it from south to north. It is a poor country of vast distances.
The Sahara desert runs through the north, and equatorial rain forests
and marshes dominate the south.
This government is dominated by the Islamic militant party, the
National Islamic Front (NIF), that took power eight years ago in a
military coup, ousting an elected civilian government. It inherited a
civil war, or more correctly, came to power to prevent an imminent
negotiated solution to the civil war that would have restored regional
and religious rights.
This civil war, which has now lasted fourteen years, is not a
simple matter of north against south, Arab Muslims against Christian
and animist Africans. [Anthropologists tell us that animists believe
that men, animals, plants, stones and so forth are inhabited by souls,
and southern Sudanese peoples practice ``traditional African beliefs''
honoring their ancestors.]
The war is not monocausal. Religion is one--but only one--of the
factors competing to define national identity. It is also about ethnic
origin and culture, language, and race, about clashes of political
systems, allocation of resources in a desperately poor country, and
about the centralized elite versus the marginalized peoples in this
hugely diverse polity.
The civilian victims of war-time abuses by the Islamist government
are not targeted solely because they are Christians; indeed, the most
devastated civilians are probably not Christians at all, but
practitioners of traditional African beliefs, who are by a large margin
the numerical majority in the south.
There are so many reasons for the armed conflict between the
government and the rebels. One Christian southerner told me that if all
non-Muslims converted to Islam tomorrow the war would still go on, and
with it the gross violations of human rights. As discussed below, there
are Muslims on the rebel side, and Christians on both sides of the
conflict.
The war started in 1983 when a prior government (of which the NIF
was a member) reneged on its agreement to give the south autonomy, and
moved away from pluralism to the creation of an intolerant Islamic
state. This government exploits the inherited war to justify and
facilitate its efforts to convert everyone to its political Islamic
agenda. Government rallies are held and the head of state addresses the
participants as Muslims and encourages them to continue with the Holy
War, assuring them that if they die in the war they will be religious
martyrs and will receive a reward in heaven as promised in the Koran.
The NIF government claims to its followers inside Sudan and to the
Third World, especially to Arabs and Muslims, that it is waging a holy
war in defense of a vast Christian and western conspiracy to split and
destroy the Arab Islamic nation. The war is not that simple, however,
even for the NIF. Nothing in Sudan is so straightforward.
To start with, Sudan's estimated 26.7 million population is very
diverse in religious, ethnic, linguistic and cultural terms. According
to the 1956 census (the only one which included ethnic origin), Sudan
housed nineteen major ethnic groups and 597 subgroups, who run the
racial and ethnic gamut. [Despite this diversity one thing that most
have in common is that some eighty to ninety percent of all Sudanese
live below the world poverty line.]
Those who identified themselves as Arabs formed the largest ethnic
group, at 40 percent of the population. Sudanese Arabs do not usually
regard themselves as one people, however, but are composed of many
different tribes found along the Nile valley and elsewhere in Sudan,
with visible differences in physique, dress and, among more traditional
people, facial scarification. They tend to be lighter-skinned than non-
Arab Sudanese, although many Sudanese Arabs are taken for African
Americans when they are in the US.
Sudan's ethnic pluralism is illustrated by the fact that the Dinka
are the largest single people or ethnic group in the country although
they form only about 12 percent of the total population. No one inside
Sudan mistakes the Dinka for Arabs; they are very tall, slim, black-
skinned Africans originating in southern Sudan, where they are part of
a rich mix of different African peoples of distinct physiques, customs,
and languages. The Dinka are just one of the peoples who have greatly
suffered--in loss of lives, property, and cultural cohesion--in the
civil war.
There are three main religious groupings in Sudan: Islam,
traditional African religions, and Christianity, in that order. Islam
is the state religion but only about 60 percent of the population are
Muslims (all Sunni Muslims). Some 4 percent are Christians (or about 15
percent of the southern population), although that number is growing.
The balance, or about 36 percent, are those who believe in traditional
African religions. These groups do not live in geographically separate
parts of the country; there are certainly thousands of Muslims in the
south and there are millions of Christians and traditional African
religionists in the north.
The south, if independent, would not be considered a Christian
country by culture, where Christian practices are part of the fabric of
everyday life. Important customary practices that have long been an
intrinsic part of southern cultures, such as polygamy, continue even
though they are contrary to Christian doctrine.
The numbers of Christians are growing. As Father Marc Nikkel so
powerfully describes, southern Sudanese have been struggling to survive
and live through a period of enormous war-caused trauma and social
dislocation. Many are discarding the old ways which have not protected
them from the military, cultural, religious, and linguistic onslaught
of the northern Islamists. Southerners are seeking an explanation,
solace and defense in Christianity--and its global ties--as perhaps
never before. This motivation for conversion also applies to
southerners, Nubas and others, who have migrated there to the north to
escape the war. These marginalized peoples who are neither Muslims nor
Christians are subjected to second-class citizenship and discrimination
on account of their perceived ``backwardness;'' some northerners, in
ignorance of their cultures, regard believers in traditional African
religions as being a blank slate and having no culture. They believe
that they are doing ``pagans'' a favor if they convert them to Islam,
even forcefully. To better resist this imposition, many African
believers convert to Christianity.
Politics and war in Sudan reflect the country's complex population.
Members of these three main religious groups are found on both sides of
the conflict, and not in small numbers, \1\ despite the fact that the
self-designated Islamic state is conducting the war as a jihad or holy
war. Let me outline some of the ethnic/religious alliances in the war,
and why limiting sanctions to religious persecution would backfire in
this context.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ One reason there are non-Muslims fighting with the government
is that the government has the power of conscription and uses it to
draft southern Christians and traditional African believers into its
army in the north and in garrison towns in the south. It uses these
non-Muslims as cannon fodder for the jihad. In this is it aided by the
country's dire poverty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There are southerners and non-Muslims fighting with the government
in part because the government has a successful and pernicious policy
of setting southerners against each other and fomenting intra-southern
ethnic hatred in the south and elsewhere. In violation of human rights
requiring the state to protect minorities, the government deliberately
stirs up hatred and fear of ``Dinka domination''--although the Dinkas
roughly number only three million of a total 26.7 million. A Dinka
educated in US universities, John Garang, has been the head of the
principal rebel group, the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), since
its formation in 1983. The government takes advantage of every opening
to deepen ethnic rivalries and buy off individual commanders and their
followers.
Government manipulation and hate politics are not the only reasons
non-Muslim southerners are to be found fighting on the side of the
Islamic government. Many southerners and Christians now aligned with
the government were SPLA members who broke away from that rebel force
in the early 1990s, due in part to SPLA human rights abuses and in part
to internal power struggles. Indeed, the second-largest southern
people, the Nuer, mostly participate in a breakaway wing of the SPLA
led by Riak Machar and since 1991 have fought almost entirely against
the SPLA. They are now formally allied with the government, and signed
a peace agreement in April 1997 in which the government agrees to
permit a referendum in the south on self-determination. The Nuer have a
history of alternately fighting against and marrying their Dinka
cousins that stretches back at least to the time anthropologists began
studying them. Many Nuer converted to Christianity through the work of
Presbyterian missionaries. But there are Nuers in the SPLA.
The government's divide and rule policy is applied to every ethnic
group, including the Dinka. There are several prominent Dinka military
commanders who left the SPLA and are now on the government side. Most
notorious among them is Commander Kerbino Kuanyin Bol, who made world
headlines in late 1996 by holding a medical relief plane and its crew
hostage, absurdly demanding millions of dollars in ransom. Kerubino was
a Sudan army officer before helping form the SPLA in 1983 and once
again has a high rank in the Sudan army. The government grants him
total impunity for his scorched earth campaign against his own Dinka
people in the southern region of Bahr El Ghazal. It is also true that
his resentment of the SPLA is a personal one: for allegedly plotting a
coup against Garang, he was held in arbitrary detention for five years
by the SPLA, until he managed to escape.
Thus the government has southerners and non-Muslims fighting on its
side; the pro-government southern forces are not insignificant, and the
communities they come from are not small or irrelevant. Their
participation cannot be dismissed as simply the result of corrupt
practices, as I have indicated. But their grievances against the SPLA
are being ill-used by the government, which it seems is now attempting
to save northern lives by pitting southerner against southerner. One
worst-case scenario, which would entail a large loss of southern
Christian and other lives, would be for the government to ``give'' the
capital city of the south, the garrison town of Juba, to the Nuer Riek
Machar's forces to defend--although in its ethnic origins Juba was
neither a Nuer nor a Dinka town--and allow the southerners to bleed
each other to death in what the NIF government can self-servingly point
to as ``ancient tribal hatreds,'' or a Rwanda scenario.
There is, in short, a south-south conflict in which most are non-
Muslims. Religion is not a factor in their struggle, although the
Islamists in Khartoum benefit from their rivalry.
Abuses committed by the government in the course of the war include
extensive failure to take combatants prisoners (with the exception of
foreigners allegedly fighting on the side of the rebels);
indiscriminate bombardment and shelling of civilian areas in the south,
the central Nuba Mountains, and now the east, and targeting landing
strips where displaced civilians gathered to receive relief food from
U.N. and other agencies; other denial of access by humanitarian
agencies to needy civilians; beating, torturing and killing civilian
detainees in garrison towns, including but not limited to the
disappearance of two hundred persons in Juba in 1992, among them US AID
employees; and conducting scorched earth campaigns of indiscriminate
firing at villages and civilians, destroying or looting valuable assets
such as cattle and grain and thus exposing the population to
displacement, disease, impoverishment, and death.
The African population of the Nuba Mountains, which is half Muslim
and half Christian, has been subjected to enormous war-time abuses. The
Nuba Mountains are not in the south but in the dead center of Sudan.
The Nubas are subjected to government army scorched earth campaigns
where villages, churches and mosques in areas where the SPLA had a
presence are destroyed. The civilian population is driven into mis-
named ``peace camps'' where the non-Muslims are forced to choose
between conversion to Islam or starvation, and all are subjected to
family-destroying practices such as repeated victimization of women by
rape and involuntary separation of children for education in Koranic
schools. Muslim Nubas are not exempt from internment in ``peace camps''
or any of these other abuses.
Slavery, as now practiced in Sudan, is a form of war booty. The
government turns a blind eye to the practice of soldiers and militia
capturing women and children in raids on unprotected southern and Nuba
villages as a way to reward its poorly-paid soldiers and militia with
``free'' domestic labor.
Abuses committed by the rebel forces, the Sudan People's Liberation
Army (SPLA), include holding fellow rebels prisoner in prolonged
arbitrary detention, confiscating food (including emergency relief
food) from civilians, looting crops, summary executions, and
disappearances. The SPLA has recruited thousands of underage boys.
Indiscriminate fighting between and among rebel factions has led to
numerous civilian casualties and enormous displacement of the southern
population. Neither the SPLA nor other rebel factions have ever
accounted for their behavior. The abuses have turned not a few
communities against the SPLA. ``And these are the people who want to
rule us?'' they ask.
The SPLA, formerly a professedly Marxist rebel group, like so many
others in Africa, has not chosen to define its struggle as a religious
war, a war of Christians against Muslims. Indeed, the platform of the
SPLA demands freedom of religion for all Sudanese and seeks a ``united,
secular'' Sudan. The SPLA includes Muslims and traditional African
believers; it includes nonsoutherners.
For many years the Muslim SPLA members were mostly from the Nuba
Mountains, whose SPLA forces are led by Yussif Kawa, a Muslim and
former school teacher whose family includes both Christians and
Muslims. In the last two years the rebel cause has been joined by more
Muslim forces from other parts of Sudan, greatly increasing the numbers
of Muslims fighting against the purported Islamic state. These fighting
forces are composed of non-Arab Muslims, such as the eastern Beja
fighters of the Beja Congress, and of Arab Muslims in the Sudan
Alliance Forces (SAF), including many from traditionally privileged
elites in Khartoum who seek an alternative to the NIF police state.
In 1995 most of the opposition came together in an umbrella group,
the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), joined by the two historically
largest political parties which are based on traditional conservative
Sunni Muslim sects; both sects and parties follow hereditary leaders.
Thus Sadiq al Mahdi of the Ansar sect is head of the Umma Party (he is
the great-grandson of the Mahdi who ejected the British and Egyptians
from Sudan in the late nineteenth century); Osman al Mirghani, of the
Khatmiyya sect, is head of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
These two political parties each consistently out polled the
National Islamic Front (NW) when there were free elections. Ironically,
the NIF was never able to come to power via elections even in the
Muslim north. It had to remove the elected Muslim leadership--Sadiq al
Mahdi of the Ansar sect was then Prime Minister--by military coup in
1989. The NIF acted when it did to prevent non-dogmatic Muslim leaders
from settling the war with the south by instituting reforms that would
have made the state more respectful of religious rights, more
religiously neutral and less Islamic, as southerners and secularists
demanded.
One of the most significant political developments in recent times,
which seriously undercuts the NIF government's claim to speak for the
Muslim majority of Sudan, is this alliance of Muslim political and
military groups with the SPLA, highlighted by the flight into exile of
the former prime minister Sadiq al Mahdi in late 1996 as well as by the
opening of a new military front in the eastern Sudan by the SAF, the
Beja Congress, and others.
In exile Sadiq al Mahdi toured the Arab world, explaining in person
and as a leader of a Muslim sect as well as a political party leader,
the disservice that the NIF government is doing not only to Sudan but
also to moderate Muslims everywhere, and how the rights of even Muslims
are not protected in this self-professedly Islamic state.
Many of the government's abuses outside the war zones are familiar:
they are the violations of political and civil rights used by
repressive regimes to maintain their grip on power. These abuses
include:
arbitrary arrests under oppressive national security
legislation giving security agents complete discretion to
target political activists;
torture in unacknowledged detention centers known as ``ghost
houses,'' leading at times to death or permanent injury;
a passive judicial system--from which many secularists were
purged immediately after the 1989 military/Islamist coup that
overthrew the elected civilian government--that tolerates and/
or sanctions complete impunity for security and military agents
who torture or kill prisoners;
trials of civilians in military courts; confiscation of
homes and belongings of the political exiles, without any
judicial process and without any concern for the women and
children living in those homes;
controls over the printed media that in effect permit only
Islamists to engage in debate;
denial of freedom of association by a ban on all political
parties, and by permitting other civic associations, such as
trade unions and professional associations of doctors, lawyers
and others, to open only if they were reorganized under NIF
control;
denial of free assembly, enforced by police brutality;
restrictions on freedom of movement inside the country and
outside;
denial of fair treatment of the urban poor, by forcibly
evicting them from their humble homes and destroying their
possessions, without notice and without compensation.
Other abuses are related to the NIF's political Islamic agenda,
including:
(a) restrictions on the movement and dress of women designed
to force them into second-class citizenship; and
(b) imposition of a legal code based on a mean-spirited
interpretation of Islam that results in different treatment of
women and non-Muslims, and the disproportionate jailing of the
urban poor, particularly southern women heads of household
accused of brewing alcohol.
The NIF aspiration to create an Islamic state with ``one language,
Arabic, one religion, Islam,'' conflicts with the demands of Sudanese
that their right to practice the religion of their choice (and to
preserve languages and cultures), and to be treated equally by the
government be respected. The dispute over the use of the Arabic
language points to another nonreligious element in the war. Arabic is
the official language, spoken by at least 60 percent of the Sudanese
population. There are over 115 tribal languages, of which over twenty-
six are spoken by more than 100,000 people. Not all Sudanese Muslims
are Arabs; some are of nomadic desert or other origin who preserve
their own non-Arab culture and language, even though they also may
speak Arabic. They have been marginalized historically and many are
among those fighting against the Islamic central government today.
Muslims who do not endorse the NIF's version of Islam and attempt
to criticize the government on religious grounds are not immune from
religious discrimination and persecution at the hands of the
government. The death penalty for apostasy (renouncing Islam) has been
enshrined in the penal code; this punishment was applied by the
government--then composed of the NIF and the dictator Ja'far Nimeiri--
in 1985, with the judicially-sanctioned execution of Mahmoud Mohamed
Taha, a religious Muslim leader and founder of the Republican Brothers
movement.
This threat underlies current government tactics to repress non-NIF
Muslims, such as replacing imams and confiscation of mosques and other
religious property, and harassment and jailing of Islamic leaders. The
government took control of the holiest shrine of the Ansar order (the
base of the Umma Party), the Omdurman religious complex of the tomb of
Mohamed Ahmed al Mahdi, on May 22, 1993, and has not returned it to
date. It appointed an imam to lead the prayers there, and said the move
was dictated by the need to preserve the national character of the
shrine. Before he went into exile in late 1996, Ansar leader and former
Umma Party leader Sadiq al Mahdi was detained several times, often
following homilies critical of the government, delivered as prayer
leader of the Ansar at the occasion of Al Eid religious festivities.
Elderly Ansar patriarchs who submitted a memorandum of protest at the
1995 arrest were themselves detained in turn. Another frequent detainee
is Mohamed al Mahdi, the main imam of an Ansar mosque, a well-respected
religious leader. One of his favorite themes is religious justice and
tolerance, against which he regularly measures government practices.
The security apparatus has detained him for up to several months at a
time for critical opinions expressed in sermons.
The government undertook, in mid-1993, a systematic campaign of
intimidation and harassment designed to lead to the replacement of
imams in mosques that Ansar al Sunna, a religious group that advocates
the strict interpretation of Islam, controlled. Communities in Khartoum
neighborhoods defied weeks of intimidation as truck-loads of riot
police parked in front of their Ansar al Surma mosques during Friday
prayers to intimidate them into accepting government-appointed imams.
Security agents made a night visit to the house of the imam of the main
Ansar al Surma mosque, threatening him with arrest if he did not leave
his position; they kidnaped and beat up his mu'azzin, who calls the
faithful to prayer. The government managed to remove the imam from his
position but his followers in the neighborhood boycotted prayers called
by the new govermnent-installed imam, and the government ultimately
abandoned its campaign. These and other abuses directed at Muslims and
non-Muslims by the government have been documented by the UN Special
Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on Religious Intolerance,
Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, dated November 11, 1996. The Special Rapporteur,
I should note, is a Muslim.
You have already heard testimony today about religious
discrimination against Christians, including that suffered by
Christians living in the north and in government-controlled areas of
the south. These include restrictions on movement and expression,
particularly of the Christian clergy, unequal status and requirements
imposed on churches, refusal to grant permits for the construction of
new churches, and destruction of ``illegally'' build churches (together
with home and schools) particularly in Khartoum.
Christian leaders thought critical of the government are severely
hampered in their every move. For instance, Sudan security refused me
permission to interview, in private, the Roman Catholic archbishop of
Juba, the southern capitol, in government hands. Two Sudan security
officers came to the archbishop's office when they discovered we were
to meet, and refused to leave, despite polite requests by the
archbishop and me. Naturally the archbishop could not speak freely in
their presence about the suffering of his flock. For protesting this
interference, I was placed under virtual house arrest and my visit to
Juba was cut short as I was escorted to the plane.
Serious religious rights violations also occur in conjunction with
the government's efforts to proselytize in prisons, the armed forces,
the civil service, the universities, and other sectors of society. The
Popular Defense Force (PDF), a government militia, is the principle
vehicle for carrying out this agenda. Participation in forty-five days
or two months of its religious-military training program, intended to
create holy warriors to fight in a holy war in the south, is mandatory
for civil servants and others, including university students--before
all universities were all closed in early 1997 to free up students for
the war. The mandatory PDF training, infused as it is with Islamic
religious fervor, creates an atmosphere of coercion on all participants
to convert to Islam in violation of freedom of religion, or if they are
already Muslim, to join in the government's particular interpretation
of Islam. PDF recruits are subjected to a severe regime of exercise,
sleep and food deprivation, and hours of religious studies in an effort
to fire up their zeal to kill. One religious Muslim student I
interviewed was so offended by this distortion of his religion that he
refused to pray in the PDF camp.
The rights of children are violated by the government's program for
street children: it takes children off the streets without finding out
if they have a family and where they are, and puts them in schools
where they are given a religious Islamic education, regardless of the
wishes or religion of their families. Many times southern non-Muslim
children on their way to market have been involuntarily separated from
their families and given an Arabic name and Islamic religious
instruction. Often underage children are drafted into the army and the
Popular Defense Forces.
Militant Islamists try to foment religious divisions by
characterizing Christianity as a ``foreign'' doctrine, introduced by
the British colonialists to divide the country. This stirring up of
animosity against Christians, which violates their right to freedom of
religious belief, draws on the fact that in modern times Sudanese
Christians have been mostly of southern origin. Southerners were
converted by foreign (mostly European and American) missionaries
beginning in the nineteenth century, when some segments of western
public opinion crusaded against the continuing enslavement of African
southerners. After the British and their Egyptian allies overthrew the
Sudanese Mahdist (Islamic) government in 1898 and governed Sudan for
the next six decades, the south was put off limits to Muslim
proselytizing and opened up again to Christian missionaries. Despite
this missionary work, traditional African believers still form the
majority religious grouping in the south, not Christians.
Muslims allege that they were persecuted in the south by Christians
and foreigners. There are Muslims in the south, some descended from
Arab traders and some who are indigenous non-Arab peoples who have
converted to Islam.
Imposition of sanctions on Sudan solely on religious persecution
grounds might incorrectly give the impression that religion is the only
or the main source of abuse, and it might pose a danger to the
Christian communities and leaders in government areas of Sudan,
including Juba. It would give the government the opportunity to again
claim that Sudanese Christians are not really Sudanese--despite the
fact that the Christian clergy is almost entirely Sudanese--and that
Christians are aligned with powerful foreign countries that seek to
protect the interests of their own correligionists, to guarantee them
privileges not enjoyed by the general population, and to use them to
destroy a country that has a Muslim majority.
Fashioning sanctions so that they also apply on grounds of
religious persecution of Muslims and other non-Christians will not cure
the perception problem. Sudanese Muslims may believe that these
sanctions are intended to benefit the Christian minority; the
government must be credited with the ability to follow the debate
inside the US. It may use religious persecution sanctions to shift the
blame for its economic, political and military problems to the
Christian communities. There is also the danger that the NIF government
might try to whip up resentment and hatred of Christian communities in
the north and permit NIF militias to physically attack them with
impunity, as these militias have been permitted to attack student
demonstrators. If the sanctions are imposed because of gross human
rights abuse of all Sudanese, the NIF will be less able to play on the
supposed Christian menace from within.
In Sudan's historical and current context, where religious
persecution is part of the wholesale violation of human rights,
religious rights can best be protected by not by singling them out for
special treatment but by imposing sanctions on account of all gross
abuses of human rights.
Senator Ashcroft. I thank you for your comments.
Baroness Cox, you mentioned in your testimony the military
activity of the government. Can you elaborate on the objectives
of the government's military campaign against the south and how
they seek to achieve those objectives?
Did I hear you say that you were at one time among a group
of citizens that was under attack? Would you clarify your
testimony in that regard?
Baroness Cox. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I am very pleased to develop a little bit the policies, or
my critique of the policies the government is adopting in its
military offensives against its own people. The evidence, as I
have said, is taken at first hand experience.
The government does deny that it ever undertakes military
offensives or that it bombs civilian targets. The photographs
which are on display here have all been taken by myself or by
my colleagues on location, and I think every one of them is a
testimony to the veracity of our critique of the military
offensives against the civilians, its own civilians, by the
regime in Khartoum.
The picture on the left shows two little Nuba Mountain boys
in what remains of their home, what remains of their village,
after ground attacks by PDF and government forces in the Nuba
Mountains. The picture to the left of that I am afraid is a
very shocking picture. But it is the reality which confronts us
when we are in Sudan. It is of a man who has suffered, been
shot at point blank range in the face by a PDF militia when he
was trying to stop them during a raid on his village in Bahr-
El-Ghazal from killing other villagers and from taking young
people into slavery. He was actually then trying to stop a boy
being abducted as a slave in front of him. He was shot at point
blank range in the face and the whole of his bottom jaw was
shot away.
To the right there is a photograph which I took just last
year following a military raid on a village, another village in
Bahr-El-Ghazal. That lady is standing in the remains of all
that is left of her hut, her tuqual. Her whole compound has
been burned, all her livestock taken, and she was left with
absolutely nothing. She said, ``I will die, I have nothing
left.'' Her two children had just been taken as slaves, two
daughters, age 13 and 15. She said, ``I have no one to help me
build, rebuild. I don't even have cooking pots. I don't have a
water utensil. I shall die.''
But she finished with characteristic Sudanese graciousness
and lack of self pity: ``But thank you for coming and thank you
for caring.''
Very briefly, the other photograph on the bottom display is
of a little lad that I took just last month. He is in what
remains of the church. The village was overrun by military
forces in Bahr-El-Ghazal. Everything was burned. The primary
school was burned, the church was burned, and the people had
been left in a state of complete destitution.
The military offensives take two forms: aerial
bombardment--and yes, many hours I have spent in foxholes with
Antonov bombers overhead, dropping their deadly cargo on
civilian targets. Most recently it was last month for the Beja
people in eastern Sudan. The Beja are a Muslim people. But we
have experienced this in other parts of southern Sudan.
Similarly, ground forces attack and have been adopting either
scorched earth policies or forcible displacement of people from
their land. We witnessed that earlier this year in Southern
Blue Nile, in Eastern Upper Nile, and with the Beja, where,
again, people have been driven off their land by ground forces.
And in Bahr-El-Ghazal they tend to be combined with the slave
raids which we have already described.
Senator Ashcroft. Reverend Nikkel, Lady Cox has made some
recommendations in terms of the potential for U.S. policy. Do
you have any suggestions in terms of what you would recommend
in terms of our policy toward the Sudanese Government or the
people of Sudan?
Ms. Rone, I would be pleased to ask you the same question.
Reverend Nikkel. I am concerned that leaders on the ground
inside have a voice on any action, on actions taken from the
side. I suppose, as I work with church leaders, particularly,
but other local leaders, there is the sense of having your
authority taken away within the context in which you live. And
if there are strong measures on behalf certainly of religious
faith, religious communities, it is important that those
communities within, inside, have some opportunity to negotiate,
knowing what repercussions they may have upon them down the
road, that action not be taken from this side without some
consultation on the ground inside Sudan.
Senator Ashcroft. Ms. Rone.
Ms. Rone. Thank you.
We actually have a long series of recommendations that I
can submit to you. But I do want to underline the focus on the
U.N. human rights monitors.
This is a program that the U.N. Commission for Human Rights
approved 2 years ago, and through all kinds of maneuvers by the
Government of Sudan and bureaucratic difficulties and
intransigence the U.N. has never funded these human rights
monitors.
It is really a shame because they could be doing a very
good job there on the spot, 24 hours a day, taking testimonies
of people and bringing to light through the official U.N.
channels the abuses that are going on there.
The U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights only goes there
once or twice a year for brief visits. This would be a much
more effective way to raise international consciousness of it.
I would also like to echo the emphasis on doing what we can
to assure access for aid to be taken to every place where there
are people in need. The government, especially, is guilty of
putting large areas off limits to aid organizations on military
grounds, rather than having anything to do with humanitarian
need. They are really trying to strangle and circumscribe the
U.N. humanitarian aid effort as much as they can. It is a daily
war of death by a thousand cuts for U.N. operations.
I think we should do whatever we can to support and expand
their humanitarian efforts.
Senator Ashcroft. I want to thank all of you for
participating in the hearing today. The tragedies that have
been described, the numbers associated with political and
humanitarian crises in Africa often are staggering. Disasters
and wars in other parts of the world often pale by comparison.
Statistics for casualties, refugees, and displaced persons
in Sudan are, indeed, some of the most troubling ones that we
might find in any setting. And yet, this is more than
statistical.
I thank you for bringing the photographs and for what I
would have to characterize as poetry, the statement that you
included from the holder of the cross, Reverend Nikkel. It
brings a sort of tangibility and a personality to what
statistics do not reveal.
These displaced individuals, these casualties, these
tragedies are some of the most troubling ones that I have ever
encountered. Religious hatred is an evil that is always present
in civil conflict in Sudan with the resulting loss of life and
destruction of property. But it is particularly difficult in
this setting because it is compounded by other flows and forces
in that nation which make this a very complex situation.
I believe there is hope for Sudan, however, and I think
U.S. policies must help the Sudanese people leave behind a
bitter past of tyrannical rule and social upheaval. We will
struggle to find ways to make sure that the United States does
not, in any way, reinforce or otherwise aggravate a situation
which is very, very troublesome. We should find a way, whenever
possible, to have policy which would encourage an amelioration
of these very serious grievances.
I wish to both Lady Cox and Reverend Nikkel a safe journey.
Thank you for coming so far to participate.
Ms. Rone, I thank you for your appearance here today.
Without further business, the committee meeting is
adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:53 a.m., the subcommittee adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
Behind The Red Line: Political Repression in Sudan
Prepared by: Human Rights Watch/Africa
* * * * * * *
Freedom of Religion
Religion is very high on the public agenda of the National Islamic
Front-dominated government. Sudan's Constitutional Decree No. 7
(Principles, Regulations and Constitutional Developments for 1993),
October 16, 1993, states in Article 1:
Islam is the guiding religion for the overwhelming majority of
the Sudanese people. It is self-generating in order to avert
stagnation and constitutes a uniting force that transcends
confessionalism. It is a binding code that directs the laws,
regulations and policies of the State. However, revealed
religions such as Christianity, or traditional religious
beliefs may be freely adopted by anyone with no coercion in
regard to beliefs and no restriction on religious observances.
These principles are observed by the State and its laws.
Only an estimated 60 to 70 percent of the Sudanese population is
Muslim, however.\146\ As for the other religions, the Catholic church
summarized the problem:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\146\ Christians account for 4 percent of the national total (15
percent of the southern population), and traditional religions the
rest. ``Sudan: Country Profile 1994-95,'' The Economist Intelligence
Unit.
Aware that the State of Sudan sponsors and promotes Islam as
the religion of the country, we Christians, as citizens of
Sudan, demand an equal position for Christianity and expect to
be treated in the same way as the Muslims. The present policy
of identifying the country and the State with one religion
only, Islam, shall not promote the spirit of dialogue,
understanding, and peaceful co-existence among the citizens of
the country.\147\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\147\ Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, ``The Miscellaneous
Amendment Organization of Voluntary Work Act 1994: Position of the
Catholic Church,'' Khartoum, February 2, 1995, p. 2.
Freedom of religion for non-Muslims has been interfered with or
denied in many ways, and non-Muslims have been discriminated against on
account of religion. Church leaders speak of a continual struggle for
survival against omnipresent government interference and harassment. We
do not know what formal status, if any, the government accords
traditional African religions; although their practitioners outnumber
Christians, especially in the south, they are less organized. Those who
practice other religions often have been made to feel marginal or
inferior by spokespersons for the National Islamic Front which controls
the government.\148\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\148\ One North American Muslim writer quoted NIF Politburo member
Ahmad `Abdal-Rahman in Al Nur (Cairo), June 17, 1987, p. 4: ``Most of
its [the South's] inhabitants are heathens who worship stones, trees,
crocodiles, the sun, etc. . . . All this presents a civilized challenge
to all of us as Arabs. . . .'' Simone, In Whose Image, p. 165.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Being a Muslim does not guarantee freedom of religion, however.
Some religious groups critical of the government and the National
Islamic Front--as being insufficiently religious--have been subjected
to harassment and their leaders detained. The two sects on which the
two largest political parties were based have been subjected to
government attempts at control and even confiscation of their property.
For Muslims, religious freedom is belied by the fact that apostasy,
the repudiation by a Muslim of his faith in Islam, is punishable by
death under section 126 of the 1991 Criminal Act. Recent converts may
be excepted from this extreme penalty but the provision remains open to
abuse. The death penalty may be imposed for what the court deems to
amount to repudiation of belief in Islam, regardless of the actual
beliefs of the accused. It is also open to political manipulation, as
illustrated by the case of Mahmoud Mohamed Taha, a religious Muslim
leader and founder of the Republican Brothers movement, executed in
1985 for apostasy.\149\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\149\ Human Rights Watch/Africa, ``In the Name of God,'' pp. 35-36.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The deepest conflict is between the government and the Christian
churches, however. The U.N. special rapporteur on Intolerance and of
Discrimination based on Religion or Belief said in his December 1995
report that there had been positive measures in Sudan as a result of
the meeting between Pope John Paul II and President Omar al Bashir of
Sudan, in particular the ``repeal of the law relating to missionary
societies, allocations of land to Christians for construction of
churches, and visa issue process made easier.'' \150\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\150\ Report submitted by Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, special rapporteur.
in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/23,
``Implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of
Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief,'' United
Nations, E/CN.4/1996/95, December 15, 1995, p. 12, para. 55.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is true that the government took a step forward in its relations
with the churches when it repealed the Missionary Society Act of 1962
in late 1994. It then took two steps backward when the president issued
a decree that would have placed churches--but not mosques--in the same
category as foreign relief organizations, required each congregation to
register separately and secure approval from a minister to continue
worshiping, and subjected them to numerous controls on their daily
affairs which violate freedom of religion under Article 18 of the
ICCPR. The churches rose in protest against its unfairness, and the
decree was not enforced, but its issuance revealed the adverse and
discriminatory treatment that non-Muslim religions receive from the
Sudanese government despite lip service paid to the notion of respect
for others' religions.
Government relations with Christian churches in government garrison
southern towns have been conducted through the prism of the war. The
government is constantly alert to possible rebel SPLA sympathizers and
infiltrators, and church leaders figure high on its list of suspects.
The war permeates relations between the government and Christian
churches because the government has characterized the civil war with
southern-based rebel forces (mostly non-Muslim) as a jihad or Holy War
on the part of the government and its religious adherents.\151\
Christians cannot be blamed for thinking that this rhetoric is aimed at
them, whether they side with the SPLA or actively oppose it.\152\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\151\ The governor of River Nile State, Staff Brig. (Ret.) Abd al
Rahman Sir al Khatim told a rally that ``jihad in Sudan was a message
and a duty with which we defend the faith and the homeland. He said it
was a message to all the sceptics who did not wish Sudan well,
conveying the courage of the sons of the north. He said the mujahidin
contributed by the state to the theatres of operations had their hearts
full with the Qur'an . . . .'' ``Sudan: Military and Food Convoy from
River Nile State Arrives in Khartoum,'' Republic of Sudan Radio,
Omdurman, in Arabic, 1300 gmt, December 4, 1995, excerpts by BBC
Monitoring Service: Middle East, December 6, 1995.
\152\ On the fortieth anniversary of the independence of Sudan,
according to government radio, President al Bashir ``reaffirmed that
Sudan was entering a renaissance, which is an embodiment of real
independence, so that Sudan could perform its Arab, Islamic and
international roles. . . . [He] referred to the spirit of jihad which
has engulfed the entire people of Sudan. He said this spirit was
continuing to deepen and expand day after day and that sectors of the
society were currently competing with each other in the fields of jihad
in defense of the faith and the homeland.'' ``Sudan: President Bashir
Says All Citizens `Engulfed' by Spirit of Jihad.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The army provides religious training (in Islam) to conscripts and
Popular Defense Forces militia in addition to military training.\153\
Christians--and practitioners of traditional African religions--are
naturally out of place. There is no respect for the right to maintain
one's own non-Muslim religion in this environment, and the pressure to
conform by adapting to Islamic religious practices is great. Sudanese
men must submit to army training if they are of the age of national
military service, and both men and women must undergo forty-five day
PDF training if they are government civil servants or have some other
relationship with the government. Such PDF training is in addition to
national service obligations for men, and is required for entry into
university and professional licensing for both sexes.\154\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\153\ A visitor to Khartoum in 1996 observed a Popular Defense
Forces training camp in Markhiat outside of Khartoum, where ``new
recruits sang enthusiastically of jihad--holy war--and the victorious
spread of shari'a rule.'' The trainees ``sang of Allah and the battles
to be fought in his name.'' David Orr, ``Civil War Turns against
Khartoum,'' The Independent (London), February 12, 1996.
\154\ Time spent in PDF training and service is deductible from
national service requirements.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In this climate, where government rallies are held and the head of
state addresses the participants as Muslims and encourages them to
continue with the Holy War, \155\ there are frequent allegations of
religious discrimination and of denials of freedom of religion,
including freedom to manifest one's own religion.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\155\ President al Bashir addressed a mass rally held to mark the
National Martyrs' Day in Kosti, according to government radio,
stressing that Sudan would not deviate from its cultural course
regardless of the conspiracies being hatched against it by the enemies
of Islam and the homeland. . . . He said the Mahdist revolution [of
1881-98 against the corrupt Turko-Egyptian rule] would persevere for as
long as the Sudanese people stuck to the principles upheld by the
Mahdist revolution, which had called for the victory of the religion of
truth. He called on the youth to enlist in the battalions of the jihad
to defend the faith and the homeland. ``Sudan: President Addresses
Martyrs' Day Rally, Says Sudan Will Protect Homeland,'' Republic of
Sudan Radio, Omdurman, in Arabic, 1300 gmt, November 28, 1995, excerpt
quoted by BBC Monitoring Service: Middle East, November 28, 1995; see
``Sudan: President Says Jihad Against `Traitors and Enemies' to
Continue,'' Republic of Sudan Radio, Omdurman, in Arabic, 0430 gmt,
November 23, 1995, excerpts quoted by BBC Monitoring Service: Middle
East, November 25, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Even absent the war, however, the NIF aspiration to create an
Islamic state with ``one language, Arabic, one religion, Islam,''
conflicts with the demands of Sudanese that their rights to practice
different religions (and to preserve languages and cultures) and to be
treated equally by the government be respected. It appears that there
are many in government who sincerely believe that conversion to Islam
of everyone--including those who already have a religion--``is for
their own good.'' \156\ Forced conversion, however, whether to a
Christian sect or to Islam, violates fundamental human rights
principles.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\156\ This sentiment was expressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Michael Evans, ``Carey begs Sudan to stop persecuting Christian
minority,'' The Times (London), October 9, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government has pointed to the fact that the Christian
population is growing.\157\ This is accurate. The Catholic church says
that on Easter night of 1995 for instance, there were over 6,000 adults
baptized in the Catholic Church in Khartoum. Freedom of religion and
religious practices cannot be measured in numbers of conversions,
however, since it is impossible to say what the numbers would be if the
government ceased its abusive practices.\158\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\157\ ``The Response of the Government of Sudan,'' November 21,
1993, p. 23, para. 85.
\158\ The conversions are of people who previously practiced
traditional African religions. Conversions from the Muslim community
are extremely rare because they are punishable by death. One southern
intellectual notes that Christianity combined with traditional identity
among Southerners to consolidate and strengthen a modern southern
identity of resistance against Islamization and Arabization. Deng, War
of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan (Washington, D.C.: The
Brookings Institute, 1995), pp. 205-29. Whether there would be the same
number of converts to Christianity absent Islamization forces is
impossible to know.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Islamist Front ideology, according to one of its main
proponents, is expressed in the preamble to its constitution:
to group together `all the children of Sudan, men and women,
regardless of their historical allegiances, their class
situation or their regions' into one comprehensive organization
working for a Muslim Sudan.\159\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\159\ Abdelwahab El-Affendi, Turabi's Revolution: Islam and Power
in Sudan (London: Grey Seal, 1991), p. 143.
One historian described the NIF's ideology regarding treatment of
non-Muslims within an Islamic state: ``Starting from the customary
insistence that Islamic law protects religious liberty and would
encourage religious practice in general, and an acceptance that non-
Muslim communities can be left free to regulate their own family
laws,'' the NIF proposes a territorial application of shari'a,
considering the prevalence of certain religions or cultures in the area
at variance with the religion dominant in the country at large. Thus
not only Christians and practitioners of traditional African religions
in southern Sudan were to be exempt from shari'a, but Muslims living in
the south were to be similarly exempt.\160\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\160\ Tim Niblock, ``Islamic movements,'' pp. 262-64. See Chapter
V, Law and the North-South Divide.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Theoretically, under its Sudan Charter of January 1987, the NIF
accepts that a non-Muslim can be eligible for any office within the
state, including head of state, although ``religiousness in general may
be taken into consideration as a factor of the candidate's integrity.''
\161\ However, the same historian notes,
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\161\ Niblock, ``Islamic movements,'' pp. 262-64.
Flexibility of approach seems to have existed in inverse
relation to actual involvement in implementing an Islamist
programme. . . . The Muslim Brotherhood [precursor of the NIF],
despite its apparently flexible ideas, was effectively in
alliance with Nimeiri while he was pursuing policies which were
harsh, vindictive and fundamentalist. Even in the subsequent
parliamentary regime, and despite the liberal ideas propounded
in election programmes, NIF policies made possible the
retention of the laws which Nimeiri had introduced and insisted
that the courts should implement them. . . .
The apparent paradox of a movement whose approach is liberal
and flexible in the abstract, but capable of supporting narrow
and fundamentalist policies in practice, can only be understood
with reference to the dynamics inherent in religious based
political movements. The religious basis ceases to be a
framework within which ideas can be developed and debated, but
becomes a badge of identity--a slogan around which specific
sectors of the population can be mobilized, against other
movements and parties. . . . Correspondingly, to opponents the
religious dimension becomes symbolic of the attempt by one part
of the population to oppress another. Internal and external
pressures impinge to ensure that the religious framework does
not remain open and adaptive.\162\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\162\ Ibid., p. 266.
This may explain why the theory sounds better than the practice,
and how elements of religious tolerance may appear in statutes but be
lacking in day to day affairs. For instance, the government, defending
itself against charges of forced Islamization, notes that ``according
to Qur'anic teachings there is no compulsion in religion, so the
references [in the Special Rapporteur's report] to enforced
Islamization and the killing of those who refuse to convert to Islam
are against the fundamental principles enshrined in the Qur'an.'' \163\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\163\ ``The Response of the Government of the Sudan,'' November 21,
1995, p. 23, para. 84.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What is at issue in any human rights report are government
practices. The reply that ``according to Qur'anic teachings there is no
compulsion in religion'' does not dispose of the issue; it cannot be
assumed that all government practices are in complete harmony with
Qur'anic teachings, since a government is only a human institution and
not capable of perfection.
It is useful, however, that there is an official government
statement that enforced Islamization is against fundamental Islamic
principles. It would be most helpful if that statement were conveyed in
a prominent way to government agencies that have been accused of using
government resources and power to convert people to Islam, and to
agencies with which the government contracts, including Islamic relief
organizations such as Dawa Islamiyya (Islamic Call).\164\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\164\ The NIF established Islamic Dawa (Call) in the early 1980s to
promote the cause of Islam in Africa. The NIF also established the
Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA) to do humanitarian work in Africa.
Both have their headquarters in Sudan and programs in at least fifteen
countries in Africa, and a growing presence in Asia and Europe. Human
Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March 1996. These
organizations were intended to compete with parallel Christian
organizations, the reasoning being that missionaries had used education
and humanitarian aid to subvert African Muslims and it was necessary to
provide Africans with an alternative. Francis Deng, War of Visions, p.
175.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Human Rights Watch has already published a report pointing out,
with specific testimonies, the ways in which particular government
agencies have attempted to Islamize children and adults with whom they
come in contact, as in homes for street children and in the training of
army recruits and the Popular Defense Forces militia.\165\ When these
practices are terminated, then the government will no longer be accused
of forced Islamization.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\165\ Human Rights Watch/Africa, Children of Sudan.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
There is a small space for the appearance of tolerance, usually
occupied by a government-appointed Christian such as State Minister for
Foreign Affairs Bishop Gabriel Rorech, who holds a visible but token
position and routinely is presented to visitors as proof of the lack of
religious discrimination in Sudan.\166\ The space may also be occupied
by prominent foreign visitors such as the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr.
George Carey, who visited Khartoum and Juba in October 1995, and
exercised the right to speak publicly and freely about the difficult
situation of Christians in Sudan.\167\ He was quite outspoken, in what
one newspaper referred to as ``some of the bluntest speeches by an
Archbishop of Canterbury in recent memory.'' \168\ In the southern town
of Juba the archbishop referred to the `` `torture, rape, destruction
of property, slavery and death' being endured by Sudanese Christians as
a result of the government's Islamicisation programme. `I challenge
those who are responsible for such inhuman behaviour to stop. It is no
part of any creed to treat fellow human beings with such disrespect and
cruelty,' he said.'' \169\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\166\ Bishop Rorech, of the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS), was
recently elevated to the position of archbishop. Many ECS members and
clergy feel it is inappropriate for clergy to hold a government
position. The bishop is outranked in the Anglican hierarchy by the
Archbishop of Canterbury.
\167\ Michael Evans, ``Carey begs Sudan to stop persecuting
Christian minority.''
\168\ Clifford Longley, Religious Affairs Editor, ``Carey Chides
Muslims for Persecuting Christians,'' The Daily Telegraph (London),
October 9, 1995.
\169\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sudanese clergy, however, may not be so outspoken. They suffer from
a constant campaign of harassment, most notably in the case of Catholic
Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro of Juba, who is not even allowed to
receive international visitors in private; all such conversations must
take place in front of a Sudan Security agent.
Agnes Lukudu, the governor (wali ) of Bahr El Jebel state where
Juba is located, said that the Catholic archbishop takes part in
politics, and ``if you cannot see him, it is for the good of the
people.'' She said that the bishop was like a king and was not in touch
with the people; he did not mix with them except at mass, so ``the
whole story doesn't filter up.'' She preferred that Human Rights Watch
speak to a priest. When we offered to do so if we could meet a priest
privately, the offer was ignored. ``If we allow antigovernment people
to meet with outsiders, they will say the Cabinet is dominated by
Muslims,'' she said, then listed those in the Bahr El Jebel cabinet,
herself included, who were Christians. She maintained that ``it does
not follow that if the area is predominantly Christian, the leadership
should be held by Christians.''
Many have realized that ``the Church led us in Africa; we're trying
to say to the Church, tell the truth,'' she said, ending the
conversation by noting, ``We [the current government] are here to help
the people to come out of the darkness,'' \170\ a phrase frequently
used by proselytizing Islamists when referring to their dealings with
southern practitioners of traditional African religions and Christians.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\170\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, Agnes Lukudu, governor
of Bahr El Jebel state, Juba, Sudan, June 6, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Catholic church in Juba is under extreme pressure from the
government, even more than is visited on churches in Khartoum. Because
of the archbishop's statements in homilies and pastoral letters about
human rights, among other things, Sudan Security in Juba has been at
loggerheads with Archbishop Paolino Lukudu Loro since 1990. He does not
bend. In mid-1992, the SPLA attacked Juba twice and almost managed to
reach the center of the city. Following the attacks, hundreds were
rounded up by security and military intelligence and subsequently
disappeared; some were tried for treason and executed but most remained
unaccounted for. During that time many educated people close to the
archbishop disappeared.\171\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\171\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, Khartoum, June 9, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government's record is heavily weighted on the side of
religious intolerance. Take, for example, the fury with which the
government greeted the recommendation of Special Rapporteur Gaspar Biro
to the government to abolish legislation contradicting provisions of
international law to which Sudan is a party, referring to the hudud
penalties.\172\ Claiming that the special rapporteur had attacked
Islam, and seeking to speak for all the faithful, the government until
recently barred him from the country and engaged in ad hominem attacks
on his age, educational background, experience, and other personal
qualities.\173\ While we believe that this is a pretext and an attempt
to shield itself from criticism of human rights abuses, which Islam and
all major religions condemn, the government's statements about the
special rapporteur nevertheless imply religious intolerance in their
reference to his commitment to observing a major Christian
celebration.\174\ This attack on the special rapporteur's religious
practices was followed by a further statement by the government
including a veiled threat against him, in the name of religion: ``we
don't want to speculate about his fate if he is to continue offending
the feelings of Muslims world wide by maintaining that call [for
abolition of the hudud penalties], as he did in his current interim
report.\175\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\172\ ``The Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan,'' February 1,
1994, p. 42, para. 133 (a)
\173\ See ``The Response of the Government of the Sudan,'' November
21, 1995, p. 3, paras. 11 and 12.
\174\ ``The Special Rapporteur is in no position at all to report
about the rights of the child in the Sudan for the obvious reason
already given that he (while in Khartoum) has turned down an official
invitation to attend a seminar on the rights of the child held in
Khartoum during 18-20 December 1993 . . . He turned down the invitation
as he decided to leave Khartoum on 17 December 1993 one day before the
opening of the seminar, in order to meet his [C]hristmas plans.''
Ibid., p. 26, para. 94.
\175\ Statement by Dr. Ahmed M.O. Elmufti in Response to the
Statement Made by Mr. Gaspar Biro, Special Rapporteur of the Commission
on Human Rights, New York, November 27, 1995, p. 3.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ordinary non-Muslim Sudanese may be treated considerably more
harshly. Two years after barring him, the government announced that the
special rapporteur would be permitted to return to Sudan.\176\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\176\ Statement by H.E. Abdel Aziz Shiddu, Minister of Justice,
made before the 52nd session of the Commission on Human Rights, Geneva,
April 17, 1996, p. 5.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Applicable Law
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is protected in Article
18 of the ICCPR which provides:
(1) Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought,
conscience and religion. This right shall include freedom to
have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and
freedom, either individually or in community with others and in
public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in
worship, observance, practice and teaching.
The African Charter also protects freedom of religion.\177\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\177\ African Charter, Article 8: ``Freedom of conscience, the
profession and free practice of religion shall be guaranteed. No one
may, subject to law and order, be submitted to measures restricting the
exercise of these freedoms.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom of thought, conscience and religion is so fundamental that
Article 18 of the ICCPR is nonderogable, which means it may not be
suspended even in time of emergency. ``Religion or belief'' was not
limited to a theistic belief but includes equally nontheistic or even
atheistic beliefs.\178\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\178\ Partsch, ``Freedom of Conscience and Expression,'' p. 214.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Freedom of religion also means freedom to change one's religion,
under Article 18 (2) of the ICCPR. Attempts made during the drafting of
the covenant to delete freedom to change religion were defeated. The
right to retain one's religion, that is, to reject zealous
proselytizers and missionaries, was also confirmed in this paragraph.
The clause also protects against coercion to support a religion other
than one's own, ``for instance by payment of church taxes or
contributions.'' \179\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\179\ Ibid., p. 211.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Limitations on the right to manifest one's religion--not on freedom
of religion, however--are described in Article 18 (3).\180\ Limitations
on the right to manifest one's religion are permitted in case of public
safety and order (to prevent public disorder), but not for national
security reasons. Limitations may be imposed only to protect
``fundamental freedoms'' of others.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\180\ ICCPR, Article 18 (3): ``Freedom to manifest one's religion
or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by
law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or
morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.''
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
``A state whose public policy is atheism, for example, cannot
invoke Article 18 (3) to suppress manifestations of religion or
beliefs,'' according to one legal authority.\181\ Nor can a state whose
public policy is one religion use Article 18 (3) to justify the
suppression of other religions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\181\ Partsch, ``Freedom of Conscience and Expression,'' p. 213.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 1981 the General Assembly proclaimed the Declaration on the
Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on
Religion or Belief. Article 2 provides:
(1) No one shall be subject to discrimination by any State,
institution, group of persons, or person on the grounds of
religion or other belief.
(2) For the purposes of the present Declaration, the
expression ``intolerance and discrimination based on religion
or belief '' means any distinction, exclusion, restriction or
preference based on religion or belief and having as its
purpose or as its effect nullification or impairment of the
recognition, enjoyment or exercise of human rights and
fundamental freedoms on an equal basis.
The declaration lists a number of religious freedoms. Including the
right to maintain charitable or humanitarian institutions, to acquire
materials related to religious rights, to issue publications, to teach,
to solicit financial contributions, to train leaders, to observe
holidays, and to communicate with others regarding religion, at the
national and international levels.\182\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\182\ Article 6 of the Declaration defines the right to freedom of
thought, conscience, religion or belief to include, inter alia, the
following:
b. To establish and maintain appropriate charitable or
humanitarian institutions;
d. To write, issue and disseminate relevant publications in
these areas;
f. To solicit and receive voluntary financial and other
contributions from individuals and institutions;
l. To establish and maintain communications with individuals
and communities in matters of religion and belief at the national and
international levels.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christians
Christian churches have been subjected to government intrusion into
the organization of their religious affairs. Christian priests have
been arrested on specious charges, and church leaders have been denied
their right to freedom of movement. Church-state relations are at a
very low ebb.
Historically successive governments both during and since colonial
times interfered with and regulated the activities of religions in
Sudan by dividing the country into exclusive zones of influence--with
the south set aside for Christian missionaries and off limits to
Islamic proselytization and public worship. Christian missionaries were
forbidden any activities in the rest of the country.\183\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\183\ Alier, Southern Sudan, p. 17.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since independence, there have been enormous population shifts,
with millions of southerners fleeing drought, war and famine from their
homes in central and southern Sudan to the cities of the north,
particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Many internal migrants--
southerners--banded together and formed Christian churches throughout
the north; they arrived a few years later than the several hundred
thousand drought victims from western Sudan--mostly Muslims--whose path
they followed into urban shantytowns. In the Three Towns (Khartoum,
Khartoum North and Omdurman) slums, the dispossessed southerners built
their homes as well as their own small churches/community centers of
cardboard, mud and other inexpensive materials.
After the 1989 coup, the NIF came to power with an Islamist agenda,
openly determined to transform Sudan from a multi religious society
into an Islamic state. This pressure to Islamize (and Arabize) may have
contributed to southern migrants' increasing adherence to
Christianity.\184\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\184\ Christianity has been embraced or re-embraced by southern
migrants to the north because of the role played by the churches in the
integration of the migrants to urban life (material assistance,
education, and continuing contacts with the village of origin and
ethnic group), and the war and the reactions it engenders. Northern
society is seen as aggressive and segregative. Roland Marchal, ``La
`vernacularisation' de christianisme,'' Sudan: History, identity,
ideology, pp. 189-90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In October 1994, the government sponsored a Muslim-Christian
Religious Dialogue Conference which a representative of the Vatican
addressed.\185\ As a concession to this forum, President (Lt. Gen.)
Omar Hassan al Bashir announced that the Missionary Societies Act of
1962 would be repealed. This law, introduced by a previous military
regime, was used to expel all foreign Christian missionaries from the
country in 1964. One consequence of the law was the accelerated
indigenization of the Christian churches in Sudan.\186\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\185\ The Vatican's representative, Cardinal Francis Arinze, a
Nigerian who heads the department of dialogue among religions, called
on the Sudanese to promote dialogue at home; the conference was
attended by 500 people, of whom 150 were from outside Sudan. Alfred
Taban, ``Sudan Holds Inter-religious Dialogue,'' Reuter, Khartoum,
October 8, 1994.
\186\ The Missionary Societies Act was an attempt to regulate, by
means of a system of licences, the activities of missionary society.
Two prominent historians described it as ``a crude device to allow
unlimited interference with missionaries.'' P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, A
History of the Sudan, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 1988), p. 179.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
After this conference, the government began meetings with various
churches on an irregular basis in order to improve communications.
Those in attendance for the government at meetings with the Catholic
church included a representative of Sudan Security (on behalf of the
ministry of interior), a representative of the ministry of social
planning's office in charge of church personnel, a representative of
the ministry of interior responsible for exit visas and other travel
permits, and a representative of the Council for International People's
Friendship.\187\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\187\ Human Rights Watch/Africa telephone interview, New York,
March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most church leaders feel the dialogue is not going anywhere. One
pointed to symbolic actions that are cost-free but deliberately
neglected. For instance, the Kordofan governor and other officials were
invited but failed to appear at the consecration of the bishop of El
Obeid, Mons. Antonio Menegato, held on March 3, 1996.\188\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\188\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arrest of Church Leaders
The government has claimed to have exposed particular priests or
church leaders as rebel sympathizers and thus confirmed its suspicions
that the churches and their followers are a ``fifth column'' in the
Islamic state. On January 16, 1996 the government in a filmed ceremony
released a Catholic priest, Fr. Mark Lotede, and a Catholic school
student, Simon Peter; at the ceremony the priest, detained in Juba,
``admitted'' that he had been involved in sabotage plans. This ceremony
took place in the presence of government officials from Sudan Security
and the ministry for social planning involved in church affairs, and
the papal nuncio and other Catholic officials summoned there for that
purpose.
Shortly after the priest and student were released, the Vatican
accused Sudan Security of torturing the priest into confessing, and of
torturing a student into testifying against the priest. The papal
nuncio, Amb. Archbishop Erwin Josef Ender, wrote a scathing letter to
the government after witnessing the event, and rejected all statements
made there by the two men as the product of torture.\189\ ``I was
revolted by the lying and violent spectacle,'' the nuncio wrote. He
also protested the fact that he and the other Catholic officials were
brought to the ministry under false pretenses, saying he would never
have attended if he had known they were going to stage such a televised
spectacle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\189\ Letter, Archbishop Erwin Josef Enter, ambassador from the
Vatican, to S. Mohamed Osman al Khalifa, minister of social planning,
Khartoum, January 25, 1996. This letter with a cover letter of the same
date was circulated to the diplomatic corps in Khartoum.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fr. Mark Lotede, of the Toposa tribe originating around Kapoeta in
Eastern Equatoria, southern Sudan, had worked actively since 1991
against the government policy of abducting Toposa children and
interning them in a camp at Qariat-Hanan where they were exposed to
forced Islamization.\190\ According to Catholic church sources, some of
the children were sent abroad to Libya and Saudi Arabia, some were sent
to work on farms, and others were given military training and sent to
the front. Fr. Lotede, a teacher at St. Mary's Minor Seminary in Juba,
assisted the Toposa children who escaped from the camp and helped some
register in the church schools in Juba; others tried to return to their
Toposa villages outside Kapoeta.\191\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\190\ This practice is discussed in Human Rights Watch/Africa,
Children of Sudan, pp. 14-15.
\191\ Confidential communication to Human Rights Watch/Africa,
March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government detained and interrogated Fr. Lotede several times
about his work with the Toposa children. He was detained on December
27, 1995 in Juba. Simon Peter, a Toposa youth who had recently
graduated from the Comboni secondary school in Khartoum where he had
lived since 1989, was detained at the Juba airport on December 26,
1995. Both were released at the televised ceremony on January 16,
1996.\192\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\192\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fr. Romeo Todo, a Catholic priest from the Didinga tribe of Eastern
Equatoria and teacher at the Comboni College in Khartoum, was arrested
on January 5, 1996 at the college in Khartoum and released January 14.
He is chaplain to the Young Christian Students in the Archdiocese of
Khartoum. He was reportedly questioned with regard to the activities of
those just detained in Juba. The church attempted to mediate and secure
the release of the two priests, daily inquiring in many fora about
their whereabouts, but failed to learn anything until the
ceremony.\193\ The government had an agreement with the Catholic church
that no clergy would be arrested without first referring the case to
the archbishop, but it did not follow the agreement, and the church did
not learn of the allegations against the two priests until their
release.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\193\ ``Vatican: Sudan Holds Three Catholic Clerics, Vatican
Says,'' Reuter, Vatican City, January 11, 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On January 16, the nuncio and Archbishop Gabriel Zubeir Wako of
Khartoum were summoned by the ministry of social planning to come to
its office to witness the freeing of Fr. Mark Lotede; the nuncio was
specifically assured that there would be no television cameras present.
Upon arrival, they saw that a television camera was filming all the
events. In addition, the detained clerics were not turned over to the
nuncio immediately, but the Catholic prelates, accompanied by the
secretary general of the Sudan Council of Churches, Mons. John Dingi,
were required to witness the clearly rehearsed ``confessions'' of the
student Simon Peter and Fr. Lotede, while M. Abdin, from Sudan Security
in Juba, sat in the corner to monitor events. Dr. Mustafa O. Isma'il,
of the government-sponsored Council for International People's
Friendship, also attended.
At the ceremony, the government charged that Fr. Lotede was
planning to blow up security installations in the town of Juba, where
he was based, and had set up an organization, including several
politicians, to send students to SPLA-controlled Narus to the southeast
of Juba.\194\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\194\ Jeffrey Donovan, ``Vatican accuses Sudan of torturing
priest,'' Reuter, Vatican City, February 3, 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the letter to the diplomatic corps in Khartoum, the nuncio
stated that the student Simon Peter and Fr. Mark Lotede had been
physically and psychologically tortured and their lives threatened by
security to force them to make false statements, and that they denied
to him that they had ever done what they confessed to. The nuncio
firmly asserted that all the confessions made there were ``completely
false'' and did not correspond to the facts, that the whole story and
its details were ``pure inventions.'' \195\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\195\ Letter, Archbishop Enter to S. Osman al Khalifa, January 25,
1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to information available to Human Rights Watch, Fr. Mark
Lotede was tortured for three hours on the day of his arrest by Sudan
Security in Juba and accused of being the ``obstacle to and enemy of
Islamization among the Toposa people.'' \196\ His physical torture came
to an end after a senior Sudan Security officer intervened and stopped
it. According to Fr. Lotede's statement to church authorities, intense
interrogation and psychological torture continued for eight days: he
was told that the Toposa youth in detention would continue to be
tortured and would eventually be executed if he did not accept as true
the allegations against him. He could hear the cries of these youth
under torture almost every night from his cell. Once he gave in to this
enormous pressure, to save their lives, he was taken to a judge to
plead guilty, but he was not given any opportunity to plead innocent or
explain himself. He was threatened with death if he did not follow the
script: the security officer who had tortured him put a pistol to Fr.
Lotede's head to press this point home.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\196\ Confidential communication to Human Rights Watch/Africa,
March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to the accounts given to the church, Simon Peter and
three other Toposa youth were detained together by Sudan Security in
Juba. The four were accused of being rebels and tortured, and one was
subjected to electric shocks. They were told their family members would
be killed (some of the family members were even identified by name) if
they did not admit to the allegations against them and Fr. Lotede. They
were rehearsed with a script full of accusations against Fr. Lotede for
nine days, and beaten when they deviated from it. The four were taken
to the judge at the same time as Fr. Lotede and their false testimonies
were videotaped and tape recorded. On January 13, 1996, Simon Peter and
Fr. Lotede were flown to Khartoum.
Two weeks after the releases, Sudan Security began to search for
the student Simon Peter, harassing his home in Khartoum and detaining a
neighborhood girl for thirteen hours for questioning about him. The
family temporarily left their home to avoid constant security visits at
odd hours of the night. The papal nuncio wrote twice to the government
on Simon's behalf, to no effect.\197\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\197\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Attempt to Register Churches as ``Voluntary Societies''
In October 1994, at a government-sponsored religious dialogue
conference, President al Bashir announced that the Missionary Societies
Act of 1962 would be repealed. While welcoming the nascent dialogue,
leaders of the indigenous Church voiced their concern for the use of
religion in the war in southern Sudan, complained about the lack of
religious freedoms and called for equality between Muslims and
Christians.
The repeal of the Missionary Societies Act did not lead to churches
finally receiving the equality under law they sought with the followers
of Islam. The president instead decreed and signed new legislation in
late 1994 (Provisional Order of October 4, 1994) \198\ to regulate
church affairs, which would have treated churches not as spiritual
institutions of heavenly origin but as foreign nongovernmental
organizations which must be registered with a state official, who would
have the power to terminate their existence.\199\ There was such
resistance to the Provisional Order that it has not been enforced. No
other legislation has been proposed in its place.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\198\ Under the 1994 procedure for legislation in Sudan, decrees
are issued by the president and must be confirmed or amended by the
Transitional National Assembly within two months in order to become
law.
\199\ Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, ``The Miscellaneous
Amendment;'' Province of Episcopal Church of Sudan, Khartoum,
``Provisional Order: Miscellaneous Amendment (Organisation of Voluntary
Societies) Act 1994,'' February 2, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Episcopal and Catholic churches responded in writing to the
Provisional Order, the Catholic church condemning it as ``the most
comprehensive, thorough and far-reaching attempt to control (and
potentially to terminate) the life and activity of the Church.'' \200\
The Episcopal church found the Provisional Order ``repugnant and
irrelevant to the evangelistic mission of the church.'' \201\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\200\ Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, ``The Miscellaneous
Amendment,'' p. 2.
\201\ Province of Episcopal Church, ``Provisional Order,'' p. 1.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unlike Article 22 of the ICCPR on free association and Article 21
on peaceable assembly, Article 18 on freedom of religion is a
nonderogable right--meaning it cannot be suspended even in time of war
or other extreme emergency--and its limitations clause is more
circumscribed than are the limitations clauses of Article 22 or 21.
Therefore limits on nonreligious organizations that might be
permissible under Article 22 or Article 21, such as restrictions for
reasons of national security, are not applicable to religious
organizations under Article 18.
The Provisional Order the government wanted to apply to the
churches, however, would have amended the Alien Voluntary Work in the
Sudan (Organization) Act of 1988, which regulates--tightly--the affairs
of foreign nonprofit organizations. The Provisional Order would add to
the definition of organization covered by the Alien Voluntary Work Act
``any foreign voluntary organization whose purpose is to carry out work
the nature of which is . . . religious.'' \202\ In the past few years
the number of international nongovernment nonprofit relief and
development organizations have been subjected to increasingly tight
restrictions by the ministry of social planning and others on their
charitable activities in Sudan, to the point where many found
government interference made their presence untenable, and terminated
operations in the country.\203\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\202\ Provisional Order: The Miscellaneous Amendment (Organization
of Voluntary Work) Act 1994, Article 2.2, signed by President (Lt.
Gen.) Omar Hassan Ahmed al Bashir, October 4, 1994.
\203\ Only twenty-three international relief agencies were
registered by the government in 1990, a decided diminution from the
mid-1980s when eighty-two were registered. J. Millard Burr and Robert
O. Collins, Requiem for the Sudan: War, Drought, and Disaster Relief on
the Nile (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1995), p. 276. Western
agencies attempting to work in Khartoum were shunned by government
agencies and indigenous Islamic aid agencies, according to the authors.
The situation has deteriorated greatly in this respect since 1990.
Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
At the same time, the Provisional Order would have amended another
law, the Societies Registration Act of 1957, which applied to national
nongovernment organizations, and extended its coverage to religious
organizations.\204\ Prior to the Provisional Order, religious work was
not covered by the Alien Voluntary Work Act or the Societies
Registration Act.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\204\ Provisional Order of October 4, 1994, Article 2.1.2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Catholic church rejected the definition of the Church as a
purely human society and organization, and therefore considered that
the Provisional Order did not apply to the Catholic church.\205\ The
Provisional Order would have required all churches existing before
October 1994 to apply for registration to the Commissioner of Social
Planning within sixty days, \206\ according to the Episcopal Church of
Sudan. It would have required each new congregation of existing
churches to register as new and separate churches. That commissioner
would have the power to accept or reject the application, forwarding it
to the minister of social planning for approval of the rejection or
registration on fulfilment of conditions. If the conditions were not
fulfilled by the church within ninety days, it was to cease to
function, and its assets disposed of in liquidation.\207\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\205\ Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, ``The Miscellaneous
Amendment,'' p. 2.
\206\ Neither the Catholic nor the Episcopal Churches has ever been
required to register with any government agency before, although
various charitable activities are regulated by the government. Province
of Episcopal Church, ``Provisional Order,'' p. 7.
\207\ Ibid., p. 2.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The requirements for churches under the Provisional Order appear to
be identical to what would be required for an ordinary foreign
nonprofit corporation: submit an annual statement of accounts to the
minister, hold annual meetings, file a membership list, elect officers
as set forth in its by-laws, and so forth. This would not be limited to
the relief and development programs of churches, but extended to them
as entire spiritual institutions, according to the Episcopal
Church.\208\ The minister would have the power to cancel a registration
if a church contravened the provisions of the act. He could cancel a
registration if a church's total membership was less than thirty.\209\
Although this order does not appear to have been enforced, churches are
unsure of its status, and of theirs.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\208\ Ibid., pp. 3-4.
\209\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Church Construction and Demolition
The government has defended itself against charges of forced
Islamization by pointing to the proliferation of churches in Khartoum
State, with ``more than 500 new churches by February 1993.'' \210\
While there may have been 500 new churches (or congregations of
existing churches) in Khartoum by February 1993, a number we cannot
verify, their status was ambiguous at best. There were no church
buildings for worship built with any official permission because their
sponsors concluded that requests to build churches would be denied; no
permission to build a church has been issued for decades, according to
many church and other sources. Instead, many churches rent or share a
pre-existing location.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\210\ ``The Response of the Government of the Sudan,'' November 21,
1995, p. 23, para. 85.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The government denies it has destroyed places of worship.\211\ If
churches are built or located in ``unauthorised'' areas where their
parishioners are, then the churches will be demolished along with all
other structures when the bulldozers arrive.\212\ Many churches
structures have been so demolished. Human Rights Watch visited the site
of a recent demolition in one of the vast shantytowns of Omdurman on
May 30, 1995, and saw one church (used also as a school and community
center) of mud that had recently been bulldozed, its front door was all
that remained standing. In another area of Omdurman, the shantytown
parishioners were dismantling a modest church structure they had built,
trying to salvage what they could, before government demolition.\213\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\211\ Ibid., p. 23, para. 86.
\212\ Many Christians live in the vast slum and shantytown areas of
Greater Khartoum, and have few or no rights according to draconian
government urban planning schemes. (See below)
\213\ A recent report by a Catholic group claimed government troops
destroyed two villages in the Nuba Mountains of central Sudan and
bombed and desecrated a church on March 24, 1996. ``Church Says Sudan
Army Uproots 1,000 Families,'' Reuter, Nairobi, Kenya, April 16, 1996.
The Sudan government denied the allegations on April 24, 1996 in a
statement issued by its embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The situation is only slightly better in officially approved
transit camps for the displaced and the peace villages for the
displaced, who have been moved to these locations by the government
that bulldozes their shantytown homes and churches. Whereas no
permissions are forthcoming in the large ``unauthorised settlement''
areas, government officials will sometimes issue permits for temporary
structures in the official transit camps for the displaced; these
camps, however, are not designed to be permanent. Families relocated to
these transit camps have no right to stay there and are subject to
relocation whenever the government wants. Apparently in peace villages,
where there is a right of tenure, the government may issue a permit for
a multi-purpose center, which will then be used as a church and for
other neighborhood activities. These are not permits for churches per
se and the buildings may not have religious symbols on the outside,
although inside such symbols are permitted.
Churches not only conduct religious services. They also try to
provide social services for the poor. These efforts are viewed with
extreme suspicion by government officials, who attempt to obstruct
these activities in a variety of ways. These activities are religious
practices falling within the freedom set forth in Article 18 (1) of the
ICCPR, the ``freedom, either individually or in community with others
and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in
worship, observance, practice and teaching,'' and spelled out in more
detail in the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of
Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, Article
6, specifying that freedom of religion includes the right to maintain
charitable or humanitarian institutions, to acquire materials related
to religious rights, to teach, to train leaders, and other activities.
Churches attempt to provide services to the very poor displaced
families who live in these transit camps and peace villages. Often the
communities want schools for their children.
Church Schools and Teaching of Religion in Government Schools
The government's claim that ``the teaching of Christianity in
government schools in the north has, for the first time, been made
available by the current government so as to give equal rights to the
Christian minority,'' \214\ is not accurate. Teaching Christianity to
Christians in government schools in the north has been part of the
education curriculum since before independence (1956).\215\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\214\ Ibid., p. 23, para. 84.
\215\ This section is based on conversations with clergy inside and
outside Sudan, several of whom have worked in educational institutions
as teachers and administrators.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
To graduate from secondary schools, students must pass a religion
examination. The Christians must take an examination about Christianity
and the Muslims about Islam. Those who practice traditional African
religions, however, are not examined on their religion or any other.
Instead, the government has issued a simplified paper on Islam for
them, and they are required to do little more than sign their names in
Arabic. Christian clergy believe that these students are registered as
Muslims rather than as believers in any traditional African religion.
Christian churches must provide teachers on Christianity to the
government schools. These teachers must be certified by the government
to teach a subject in addition to Christianity, and the language of
instruction must be Arabic. For many Christians, especially those
brought up in the south, Arabic is not their native language. The
difficulty of mastering Arabic has meant that there has been a lack of
qualified teachers for Christian instruction in the government schools.
The Catholic church started a teacher training college to meet these
requirements, including Arabic-language instruction, with a four year
program and 130-150 students. The first class is to graduate in April
1996, but the government still has not certified this school as a
teacher training school.
Christian students are at a disadvantage in the educational system
because of the shortage of teachers in Christianity. In some classes,
there are few Christian students and the church makes an effort to
bring them to a church on Fridays and Sundays and group them together
with others scattered in other schools for instruction. Religion is not
an optional subject; it is mandatory so that the Christians who do not
receive adequate instruction will not graduate. This system also leaves
no alternative for those who have another belief.
The government maintains that ``the religious tolerance of the
Government has resulted in the availability of a large number of very
prestigious church-run schools in Khartoum and other towns.'' \216\
While churches are permitted to run church schools, most are not
``prestigious'' schools. The prestigious church-run schools, with high
academic standards, admit many Muslim children whose parents resisted a
1994 government decree requiring all private schools to use Arabic as
the language of instruction.\217\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\216\ Ibid., p. 23, para. 84. In 1957, a year after independence,
the government nationalized all missionary schools in the south while
allowing private schools in the north, including Christian missionary
schools, to continue. Deng, War of Visions, p. 138.
\217\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The need for basic instruction (reading, writing and mathematics)
is most keen at lower levels. According to those who worked in the Dar
Es Salaam transit camp for the displaced, most of the Christian
children there, who are of southern origin, do not go to the government
schools because of government-sponsored Islamization through the
schools, despite the formal provision for classes in Christianity. They
say there is strong pressure on the children to study the Qur'an and
pressure on the girls to wear Islamic women's dress. Much depends on
the person in charge of the school.\218\ Another barrier for displaced
children at government schools, according to a recent study, is
language. Many of the children do not know Arabic well enough (or at
all) to participate in government schools, where the ministry of
education insists on the use of Arabic as the language of instruction
in basic education.\219\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\218\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, Khartoum, May 21, 1995;
telephone interview, New York, April 1996.
\219\ Ushari Ahmad Mahmud and Muhammad Zaayid Baraka, ``Basic
Education for Internally Displaced Children,'' International
Consultative Forum on Education for All, Country Case Studies: Sudan,
Khartoum, November 1995, pp. 19-21.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Christian churches have sponsored schools in the transit camps, but
not enough to fill the gap. For many reasons, only 25 percent of
school-aged children are enrolled in any school in the displaced
transit camps, according to the same survey. In government schools,
among the displaced school children, the enrollment of girls is half
that of boys, and the teacher-student ration is 1:47.\220\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\220\ Ibid., p. 18.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
One church-run school was registered with the government as a
temporary structure in Dar Es Salaam transit camp. Its Christian
sponsors applied to the government for permission to build a permanent
and larger (sixteen-room) structure. The popular committee, \221\ whose
approval was necessary, placed obstacles in the way of this
improvement, complaining that the Christian leaders were ``against
Muslims'' (although the school employed five Muslim teachers and ten
Christians). The permission for a permanent structure was not issued,
to the knowledge of Human Rights Watch. Church sources say that Dawa
Islamiya, an Islamic NGO, has established many schools in these camps,
and has easily secured the necessary government permits to do so.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\221\ Dar Es Salaam has thirty-three blocks and each has its own
popular committee. For a description of the role of the popular
committees in house destruction and forced relocation, see Chapter VII,
Internally Displaced and Squatters.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sometimes local officials give way in the face of protest, however,
but permission to build schools is never easy nor routine for churches.
In another block of Dar Es Salaam, where permission for a church school
had been granted, two Muslim families reportedly complained to the
popular committee which in turn told the church it could not build the
school. In this case, however, Christian families complained that they
had rights, too, and the popular committee withdrew its objections to
the school. The ministry of education said that the church could
continue with its activities with the proviso that no foreigners be
allowed to do anything with the church except for prayers. This was
apparently aimed at a foreign-born priest working in the area.\222\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\222\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, Khartoum, May 21, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In several disputes about the right to run schools in other blocks,
the government ordered the church sponsors to close schools in Dar Es
Salaam transit camp twice in the months between February and May 1995,
on the grounds that the schools were not used properly. One school in
question admittedly was used also for religious and community services,
meetings and adult education, because the government would not give
permission to build a church there.
On Palm Sunday of 1995 some 1,000 people attended mass held at this
school. One of the priests was summoned to the popular committee soon
afterward. Two police, two security officials and eleven popular
committee members met with him and ordered him to close the school. A
religious discussion ensued about the duty to provide food and housing
for all people (the church maintains it distributes these to all
regardless of religion). The church declined to close the school.\223\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\223\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Government efforts to confiscate food churches' relief arms used
for school children and to incorporate the teachers from the Christian-
run schools into government schools were started in 1994 and abandoned
in 1995 for lack of government funding. A brief period of official
recognition of the Christian shantytown schools ensued, followed by
destruction of the shantytowns and refusal of permission to build
schools in some transit camps.\224\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\224\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Religion in Prisons
In an effort directed at prisoner rehabilitation through conversion
to Islam, the Law for the Organization of Prisoners and Treatment of
Inmates of 1992, Section 5, Article 25, provides for the early release
of prison inmates who memorize the Qur'an. A religious commission
convened by the administrator of prisons in consultation with the
ministry of religious endowment (which oversees religious affairs)
tests the prisoners and recommends those who pass for early release. No
comparable legislation has been passed based on religious instruction
other than in Islam, providing a powerful inducement to non-Muslim
prisoners to abandon their religion. In a custodial environment, such
programs place the weight of the state so firmly in favor of conversion
to Islam that it is coercive, in violation of Article 18 (2) of the
ICCPR that no one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his
or her freedom to have a religion or belief of his or her own choice.
Furthermore, this release program discriminates against those who
cannot read or speak Arabic, in violation of Article 26 of the ICCPR in
that it does not provide alternatives to the many prisoners,
particularly women, not conversant in Arabic.
At Omdurman Prison for Women, the women's branch of Shabab Al
Wattan (Organization of the Youth of the Homeland, an NIF mass
organization) runs a program of spiritual orientation and social
rehabilitation of women prisoners. Rehabilitation is provided in the
formal instruction in Islam, although the vast majority of inmates are
of southern and non-Muslim origin. Christian clergy ministering to
prisoners however, report that they are left free to hold services and
teach church doctrine in prisons.\225\ In Kober Prison there is a
church building.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\225\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, telephone, New York,
April 25, 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Muslims
Not only does the government interfere with or deny the religious
freedoms of non-Muslims, it also clamps down on Muslim groups it
considers as too critical or ideologically out of line with its
policies. Relations between the National Islamic Front, which controls
the government, and various Islamic religious sects and groups have not
always been smooth. Some imams (prayer leaders), who accede to this
position through a consensus of community members, occasionally voice
criticism of the government. Their religious obligation of advising
their flock on worldly affairs, as well as on spiritual matters, leads
some to criticize the performance of the rulers--for instance, over the
high cost of living and the deterioration of public services. Other
imams discuss issues of doctrine on which they disagree with government
policies, such as the justification for jihad in south, and the
question of whether this is a true or genuine Islamic government.
The response of the government to this criticism and challenge of
legitimacy has been two-pronged. Where the opposition to the government
is a matter of principle and doctrine, the government has unleashed its
repressive forces against rebellious groups and imams. Groups so
targeted are the Ansar, the Muslim Brothers and the conservative Ansar
al Sunna. These groups have critical attitudes towards the government,
from outright opposition to selective independent-minded criticism,
with an occasional show of support.
The Ansar religious sect led by the Mahdi family constitutes the
popular base of the Umma Party, which like all other political parties
has been banned since the current government seized power in 1989. A
council of religious scholars and dignitaries, the Council for Ansar
Affairs (Hai'at Shi'oun al Ansar ) oversees the affairs of the sect and
the community of followers, while an executive committee runs the
affairs of the party. Ex-Prime Minister Sadiq al Mahdi, who heads the
Umma Party, lives in Sudan and advocates an attitude of ``civil
opposition'' by peaceful means, although his Umma Party is a member of
the National Democratic Alliance, the umbrella group of (exiled)
opposition political parties and armed groups.
The government took control of the holiest shrine of the Ansar
order, the Omdurman religious complex of the tomb of Mohamed Ahmed al
Mahdi, on May 22, 1993, \226\ and has not returned it to date. It
appointed an imam to lead the prayers there, and said the move was
dictated by the need to preserve the national character of the shrine,
which it claimed was threatened by the way the Ansar used it. The Ansar
moved their communal prayers and other community activities to the
smaller Wad Noubawi mosque.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\226\ Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, Critique: Review of the
U.S. Department of State's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices,
1993 (New York: Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1994), p. 347.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sadiq al Mahdi has been detained several times, often following
homilies critical of the government, delivered as prayer leader of the
Ansar at the occasion of Al Eid religious festivities. The crackdown on
the Ansar in May of 1995 involved his detention and the detentions of
other prominent Ansar leaders, such as Imam Abdalla Barakat and Faki
Abdalla Ishag, the leader of the cluster of Qur'anic schools attached
to Wad Noubawi mosque. Elderly Ansar patriarchs who submitted a
memorandum of protest against the May 1995 detention of Sadiq al Mahdi
were themselves detained in turn.\227\ Another frequent detainee is
Mohamed al Mahdi, the main imam of Wad Noubawi mosque, a well-respected
religious leader. One of his favorite themes is religious justice and
tolerance, against which he regularly measures government practices.
The security apparatus detains him--just as regularly--for up to
several months at a time for critical opinions expressed in
sermons.\228\ Such detentions of religious leaders for their opinions,
spiritual or political, constitute a serious violation of their
freedoms of religion and expression.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\227\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March 1996.
\228\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ansar al Sunna is a religious group that advocates the strict
interpretation of Islam, stripped of all the manifestations of what it
considers popular Islam, such as sufism. Its simple version of Islam is
akin to that of the Wahabi, the influential and dominant religious
doctrine in Saudi Arabia. The Sudanese Ansar al Sunna has maintained a
longstanding friendship with the Saudis and has been the recipient of
substantial Saudi funds solicited to sponsor the spread of Islam in
Sudan and neighboring African countries. Ansar al Surma channeled these
resources into the construction of nearly 400 mosques in Sudan alone,
and into the sustenance of other traditional charitable and educational
Islamic works, such as Islamic schools and orphanages.
Ansar al Surma traditionally did not have a significant political
profile in Sudan, but vehemently opposed the NIF on doctrinal grounds,
a rivalry that has been regularly reflected in reciprocal verbal and
written attacks in mosques and newspapers. For instance, Ansar al Surma
challenges the official government policy that considers war in
southern Sudan a jihad, a holy war. They argue that for it to qualify
as such, the war should have as sole objective the total submission of
all Southerners to Islam. They also dispute the Islamic credentials of
the government, citing such government practices as the recruitment of
women in the official PDF militia as evidence of a conduct contrary to
Islamic teachings.\229\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\229\ Ibid.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Perhaps as a result of this rivalry, the government undertook, in
mid-1993, a systematic campaign of intimidation and harassment designed
to lead to the replacement of imams in mosques that Ansar al Sunna
controlled. Communities in the neighborhoods of Al Thawra and Al Sahafa
in Khartoum defied weeks of intimidation as truck-loads of riot police
parked in front of their Ansar al Sunna mosques during successive
Friday prayers to intimidate them into accepting government-appointed
imams.\230\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\230\ Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, 1993 Critique, p. 347.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
During one phase of this campaign, security agents made a night
visit to the house of the imam of the main Ansar al Sunna mosque, Shams
El Din, in the populous neighborhood of the Seventh Quarter of Al
Thawra. They threatened him with arrest if he did not leave his
position. He replied that it was up to the community of worshipers to
choose their imam. Around the same period, they kidnaped and beat up
his mu'azzin, who calls the faithful to prayer. The government managed
to remove the imam from his position but his followers in the
neighborhood boycotted prayers called by the new government-installed
imam. The government ultimately abandoned its campaign.\231\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\231\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
On Friday February 4, 1994, three armed men, one Yemeni and two
Sudanese, machine-gunned worshipers while they were conducting the
communal prayer at the main Ansar al Sunna Mosque in Al Thawra. The
leader of this Ansar al Sunna congregation, Sheikh Abu Zeid, who
usually leads the prayer, was by chance not there. Followers of Ansar
al Sunna and ordinary people praying there that day suffered a terrible
loss in what was widely believed to be a failed assassination attempt:
sixteen were killed, including children, and nineteen others were
seriously injured.\232\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\232\ Report from Khartoum, March 4, 1994.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The attackers escaped unharmed but were captured by security forces
the next day, ostensibly while seeking to enter or take refuge in the
residence of Ussama Ben Lauden, a Saudi dissident deprived of his Saudi
citizenship, who is a backer of the Sudan government and resides in
Khartoum.\233\ The two Sudanese were killed and the Yemeni seriously
injured.\234\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\233\ See Scott Macleod, ``The Paladin of Jihad,'' Time Magazine
(New York), May 6, 1996.
\234\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This tragedy remains unexplained. A very speedy trial was held for
the surviving gunman and an accomplice who was alleged to have
participated in the preparations but did not take part in the attacks.
The court found the alleged ring leader guilty, and condemned him to
death. He was executed on September 19, 1994.\235\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\235\ See Chapter V.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Muslim Brotherhood, another small religious group that focuses
on doctrinal issues, breaking away from the NIF in repudiation of what
it considered the NIF's political and other worldly pursuits, also has
been targeted. Two or three outspoken leaders of the group lead the
Friday prayer in their main stronghold, the al Sababi mosque in
Khartoum North. Security agents monitor this event on a regular basis.
They have summoned Professor Al Hibir Youssif Nour Al Dai'eim, one of
the leaders of the group, several times to appear in their offices for
days at length, a form of harassment amounting to detention when
prolonged.\236\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\236\ Human Rights Watch/Africa interview, New York, March, 1996.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The second prong of the government's response to Islamic criticism
is to implement a systematic program to bring all prayer leaders under
one broad umbrella, an association of imams, and coordinate their
weekly Friday sermons. Attendance of Friday mid-day prayer, a religious
duty for Muslims, is the occasion for prayer leaders to deliver their
homilies to an attentive and well-disposed public. Members of the
public at the same time may deliver their own sermons or comment on
worldly affairs to their fellow worshipers. The association is intended
to coordinate the themes of the weekly sermons, so that one voice would
be heard in all mosques. The government-controlled radio and television
then carry this concerted message to the population through well-
prepared but obviously selective coverage.\237\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\237\ Ibid.