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Wednesday, April 21, 2004 |
SUDAN: VIOLENCE WHILE PEACE TALKS STALL
- praying for peace and deliverance in Sudan
By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission
Special to ASSIST News Service
AUSTRALIA (ANS) -- The Sudan peace talks being held in Naivasha, Kenya, have deadlocked over the use of Sharia Law in Khartoum, and the status of three disputed provinces. The peace deal guarantees that after six years there will be a referendum to determine whether Southern Sudan secedes from the predominantly Arab Muslim North. This point is integral to the present struggle with the peace deal. The oil fields are in Southern Sudan so the Government of Sudan (GoS) does not want Southern Sudan to secede. For this reason, the GoS is extremely reluctant to declare the north-south border provinces of Abyei (which is oil-rich), Nuba Mountains and southern Blue Nile - all populated mostly by southern tribes - as part of Southern Sudan as they could then vote in the referendum six years from now.
There are other problems threatening a future peace. One is the parties excluded from the present peace talks. The rebellion in the western province of Darfur arose from frustration over their exclusion. They are now being systematically punished and eliminated Khartoum-style - mass murder and rape by the National Islamic Front, plus GoS induced starvation and epidemic disease. As the Darfur people are mostly Muslim, this ethnic cleansing in Darfur is not religious but racist and a crime against humanity. The people of Darfur are not Arab but black African, and they resent Arabisation. This is not the first time the GoS has waged war against the people of Darfur.
Despite a ceasefire, fighting erupted early in March in the northern Upper Nile region of Southern Sudan. Arab Muslim militias and GoS forces from Malakal have been systematically targeting civilians in the Shilluk Kingdom, Upper Nile. The GoS is also reinforcing Arab militias from gunboats on the Nile. Some 50,000 African, predominantly Christian, Southern Sudanese civilians have been forced to flee their homes. The GoS is keen to see the southern rebel supporters cleansed out of the area. When the Shilluk Kingdom village of Popwojo was razed, the village pastor / school teacher was left to bury the dead. According to UN reports, villages, schools and health clinics have been destroyed and looted. Women are also being raped and kidnapped. Some of eight women whom Arab militias abducted from Dinyo on 4 March were nursing mothers who were forced to abandon their babies.
Seventy percent of Southern Sudanese are Christian. They have endured years of oppression by the Arab Muslim GoS as well as violent jihad. They have suffered aerial bombardment, scorched earth warfare, starvation and slavery because they refuse to be Islamised. May God in his mercy and through his power bring them peace.
PLEASE PRAY SPECIFICALLY FOR:
- God in his great mercy to bring peace to Sudan, by changing the direction of people's hearts, giving them a will for peace and helping them achieve it.
'The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.' Proverbs 21:1.
'Nothing is impossible with God.' Luke 1:37
- God to redeem all suffering, bring beauty from the ashes, work all things for good, and frustrate the Evil One (Matthew 6:13) who seeks to shatter and destroy God's people and their witness.
'You have heard of Job's perseverance [through suffering] and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.' James 5:11
'Help me O Lord my God; save me in accordance with your love. Let them know that it is your hand, that you O Lord have done it.' Psalm 109:26,27.
4:44:31 PM 
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UZBEKISTAN: Should Christians be shot? |
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By Igor Rotar, Forum 18 News Service |
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Amid a major crackdown, eleven Protestants in Nukus were questioned at the public prosecutor's office and pressured to convert to Islam. They were also threatened with being shot, though the city prosecutor, M. Arzymbetov, subsequently denied this to Forum 18 News Service. The prosecutor also tried to have a Protestant, Iklas Aldungarov, expelled from his university medical course, but the university rector, Oral Ataniyazova, has resisted the pressure. "How and what Aldungarov believes is his own personal business, and we do not have the right to interfere with it," she told Forum 18. She added that a very large number of young people in the region are becoming Christians. "Evidently, the Christian churches have managed to set up a competent, well conceived operation here. I do not think that is a bad thing. Let's see the mosques here work as well as the Christian churches." Pressure on Protestants elsewhere in Uzbekistan is also continuing. [read more...] |
4:41:12 PM
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Last Update: 5/1/2004; 11:18:54 AM
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