Meldung
World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser has told the Sudanese government to end their policy of political exclusion and social injustice. Raiser, who is on a 1-16 July 2002 pastoral visit to the Greater Horn of Africa and Tanzania, expressed these concerns during a 2 July meeting with the Sudanese government minister of Guidance and Endowments, Dr Issam El Bashir, in Khartoum.
He described the 18-year religious conflict in Sudan as a deceptive facade used by Khartoum's government while actively engaged in exacerbating all kinds of inequalities. He also told the minister that unfair distribution of wealth was yet another factor which must be addressed.
Addressing an ecumenical gathering organized by the Sudanese Council of Churches (SCC), Raiser noted that Sudanese peace talks had become "endless", and stressed the WCC's commitment to conflict resolution and reconstruction of war-ravaged southern Sudan. The protracted conflict between the Arab Muslims in the north and mostly Christian populations in the South has killed an estimated two million southerners and produced one of Africa's largest refugee populations of over half a million.
The WCC helped set up a Sudan Ecumenical Forum in 1994 comprising the New Sudan Council of Churches in the South and the Sudan Council of Churches in the North, along with overseas partners, to monitor the conflict and mobilize ecumenical support.
Raiser expressed the WCC's support to the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) as the necessary political platform for addressing Sudan's civil war. IGAD is currently meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. Its member countries are Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
The WCC delegation also visited the Dar-es-Salaam camp for displaced people in Omdurman, Sudan province. It has a population of 250,000 people with a single clinic for tuberculosis cases. Describing the camp as a second hell, Raiser
noted that the effects of two decades of war are pitifully evident on the faces of the children. For many of them, "the breath of hope is decreasing day by day," Raiser observed.
The Sudan Council of Churches (SCC) expressed concern that the exploitation of oil, located in the South, is being used to sustain the war against southerners. In a message to the WCC delegation signed by leaders of 14 member churches, the SCC stressed that "the recent battles in Western Upper Nile region, where most of the oil wells are located, justify our concern..." Noting that the root cause of the civil war "is uneven socioeconomic development" caused by "unfair distribution of wealth", the council stressed that oil exploitation "is aggravating that imbalance in wealth distribution and contributing to the underdevelopment of the marginalized areas".
The council, which represents the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches, underlined that peace initiatives like the IGAD process continue to exclude churches even as observers, and called on the WCC to help convey their concerns to such fora. "It is our strong belief that the participation of the church as part of civil society can ensure that the voices of voiceless people reach those restricted forums where important decisions are being made on their behalf," they stated.
The only interlude of peace enjoyed by the southern Sudanese was a short period following the 1972 Addis Ababa Peace Agreement, brokered by the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and in which WCC was instrumental.
The SCC went on to stress that religious freedom for non-Muslims remains restricted in Sudan. "Permits for building churches are not given and some of the old church properties built during the British colonial rule have been confiscated. Education syllabuses, they noted, "have been islamized without due regard to Christian students." The council pointed out that "the state now favours Islam as a state religion. As Islam and Arabism are combined to project Sudanese identity, Africanism and Christianity are ignored. These two elements of identity (Islam and Arabism) have been utilized for control of power and wealth in Sudan."
Sudanese Christian women from SCC member churches also had a message for the delegation. "The story of the Sudanese woman is a story of faith and hope in the midst of untold suffering and misery [ranging from] economic marginalization, increased poverty, harmful traditions and cultures, ill-health to illiteracy," they told Raiser. Presenting their message, 45 women leaders said that "Despite all this, women's creativity and resilience, faith and actions have sustained them through many difficult situations, even as they struggle to contribute to the survival of communities, church and society...
"We recognize the immense contribution that women have made as educators, caregivers and in their endless sharing of their human and material resources. It is women's faith that has continued to sustain communities in the face of unfairness, personal hurts, frustrations, stresses and horrors of the civil war, hunger and disease." The women expressed the hope that "a Moses of today" will emerge to be an instrument of deliverance of his people in Sudan.