Militants in Sudan kill Christians and set church buildings ablaze.
Personnel from the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 15, severely assaulted Karbino Bla in Wad Medani, the capital of Al Jazirah state, on January 1, following the militants’ takeover of the city on December 18. The motives for the assault were unclear.
Personnel from the RSF, which has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) since April 15, severely assaulted Karbino Bla in Wad Medani, the capital of Al Jazirah state, on January 1, following the militants’ takeover of the city on December 18. The motives for the assault were unclear.
Bla, a member of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC), died on January 5 as a result of the injuries, area sources said. His wife and a young daughter survive him.
“This is a great loss to the evangelical church in Medani,” a relative said.
Rights organizations and area residents report that the RSF has killed civilians, raped women and girls, and looted homes and shops since taking control of the state in December.
On Friday (January 12), Muslim extremists from the RSF set a church building on fire in Wad Medani, said area sources, including a SPEC pastor. He said the blaze destroyed the building’s Bibles, hymnbooks, essential documents, and chairs.
Christians in Sudan fear they are being increasingly targeted, the pastor said.
“There are radical Muslims among RSF,” the pastor said in an online post. “I met some of them in Khartoum and Medani who badly harassed me when they learned that I was a pastor.”
In Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List of the countries where it is most challenging to be a Christian, Sudan was ranked No. 8, up from No. 10 the previous year.
Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in the 2021 World Watch List.
Fighting between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, leaving more than 12,000 people dead and displacing an estimated 5.8 million others.
Christian sites have been targeted since the conflict began.
The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition in April. Still, disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.
Burhan sought to place the RSF—a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels—under regular control within two years. Dagolo would accept integration within only ten years. The conflict burst into military fighting on April 15.
Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.
Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of October 25, 2021.
After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government managed to undo some Sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group as “infidels” “and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.
Hamdock had been faced with rooting out longstanding corruption and an Islamist “d” ep state” “from Babashir’s regime—the same deep state that is suspected of rooting out the transitional government in the October 25, 2021 coup.
