Submitting to Islam—or Dying - Christianity Today

CHATYOUT NYDANG is the leader of a Muslim militia that helps the Sudanese government wipe out Christians in southern Sudan. In July relief-and-development agency director Dennis E. Bennett spoke with an elderly southern Sudanese man in the eastern Upper Nile about life in territory that Nydang patrols.

“Routinely, anyone Chatyout’s men catch walking to church is beaten and told to convert to Islam, or next time they’ll be beaten harder or killed,” the approximately 65-year-old Nuer tribesman, Jon Giang-giang, told Bennett.

After finding a Nuer Bible in his backpack, Nydang’s men recently beat Giang-giang until he was unconscious. Bennett, executive director of Servant’s Heart, says they left Giang-giang in a pit for more than two days.

Little information about abuses in the Longochok area of the eastern Upper Nile surfaced until Servant’s Heart began working there five years ago. Until two years ago, before government-allied forces lost ground to southern troops, Nydang’s men would ask women they encountered on isolated roads one question—are you Christian or Muslim?

“If she answered ‘Muslim,’ she was set free,” Bennett says. “If she answered ‘Christian,’ she was gang-raped by 10 to 20 soldiers. Then they would cut off her breasts to leave her to bleed to death, as an example to others that this is what will happen to you unless you convert to Islam.”

The government of Sudan uses such local militias in its campaign to wipe out Christians and to secure their oil-rich lands in southern Sudan. It has begun pumping oil from a well in the eastern Upper Nile.

Two decades of civil war between Sudan’s Muslim north and its Christian and animist south have left 2 million people dead. Government forces regularly target civilian villages and churches.

Sudan signed a ceasefire agreement with the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in October 2002. The government has violated it with major military offensives in the oil-rich Upper Nile since December 31.

“Attacks have continued unabated in both eastern and western Upper Nile despite the signing of a second and supposedly more comprehensive [ceasefire] in February 2003,” says Richard Chilvers of Surrey, U.K.-based Christian Solidarity Worldwide.

The October 2002 Sudan Peace Act requires the Bush administration to help monitor ceasefires and sanction violations of them. Bennett says such U.S. action has been tragically lacking.

The U.S.-backed Civilian Protection and Monitoring Team is downplaying and denying military atrocities to aid U.S.-Khartoum talks on the Western war on terrorism, among other reasons. Such distorted reports, Bennett says, stem from sheer naïveté in the CPMT’s research.

For example, when 59 southern Sudanese in Longochok, including a Presbyterian pastor, were massacred in a dispute between two Khartoum-backed local militias on May 22, the CPMT blamed the attack on southern SPLA forces. But Bennett says that SPLA forces did not arrive in the area until after May 22. They did so at the tribe’s bidding—to defend the Nuer against another attack. That attack came on May 27, resulting in the deaths of a few militiamen but no civilians.

Bennett was meeting with the local chiefs in Sudan when he found out by cell phone that the CPMT blamed the SPLA for killing the civilians. He says, “They were incredibly angry, saying, ‘These [SPLA] are the people that we asked to defend us, and they’re the ones being blamed for this? How stupid are those Americans, anyway?’ “

Congress has done what it can for the suffering Sudanese Christians. Rights organizations say it is better to petition the Bush administration to acknowledge Sudanese military attacks on civilians.

The Sudan Peace Act encourages the President, through the U.N., to help end aerial bombardment of civilians.

Ask the Bush administration to fulfill the mandates of the Sudan Peace Act: Colin Powell, Department of State, 2201 C Street, N.W., Suite 7276, Washington, DC 20520; and President Bush, the White House, Washington, DC 20500.

Pray for multinational cooperation in the efforts to achieve peace in Sudan, as well as strength and faith for the repressed southern Sudanese.

Suggested Action

—Jeff M. Sellers

Related Elsewhere

Bearing the Cross focused on Sudan in 2001 as well

Previous Christianity Today articles on Sudan include:

Sudan Peace Process Criticized | Bush acknowledges country’s military activity, but does not impose threatened sanctions. (May 21, 2003)

Slave Redemption | Americans are becoming instant abolitionists. But is the movement backfiring? (Aug. 9, 1999)

Sudan Peace Act ‘Has Teeth’ | But sanctions are at President’s discretion. (Nov. 26, 2002)

Christians Push For More Progress in Sudan | Observers say there’s a long road to go for peace. (Sept. 4, 2002)

Christian History Corner: Legacy of an Ancient Pact | Why do Christians still chafe under restrictions in some Muslim nations? It all started with Umar. (July 26, 2002)

Weblog: Peace For Sudan? | Both sides agree to secession for southern Sudan. (July 22, 2002)

Books & Culture Corner: A Cry for Help | Sudanese Christians gather in Houston and ask for U.S. support. (June 27, 2002)

Justice Delayed | Sudan Peace Act may be a casualty of the war on terrorism.

Finding Homes for the ‘Lost Boys’ | They’ve seen their parents shot, their villages burned, and their homeland recede in the distance as they escaped. Now these Sudanese youth build a new life in suburban Seattle.

Freedom Panel Alleges Genocide | U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom makes suggestion on Sudan’s worsening abuses. (May 4, 2001)

Turn Off Sudan’s Oil Wells, Say Canadian Church Visitors | Christian leaders say they are “outraged” that a Canadian oil company is paying huge royalties to Sudanese government. (Apr. 20, 2001)

The Maturing of Victimhood | A new exhibit at the Holocaust Museum is a very good sign. (Mar. 29, 2001)

Sudan Loses Election for U.N. Security Council Seat | Sanctions continue to plague the African nation’s bid for international acceptance. (Oct. 12, 2000)

Religious Freedom Report Rebukes China, Others | State Department finds many nations’ religious freedoms deteriorating, but some are improved.

China Should Improve on Religion to Gain Permanent Trade Status, Commission Says | Religious liberty in Sudan and Russia also criticized.

Southern Sudan Bombed Despite Cease-fire Promise | Details sketchy from town of Yei, near Democratic Republic of the Congo. (May 8, 2000)

Turn Off Sudan’s Oil Wells, Say Canadian Church Visitors | Christian leaders say they are “outraged” that a Canadian oil company is paying huge royalties to Sudanese government. (Apr. 20, 2001)

Sudan Relief Operations Endangered | Rebel demands cause agencies to curtail efforts. (April 3, 2000)

Bombs Continue to Fall on Ministry Hospitals in Sudan | Samaritan’s Purse hit for fourth time, two killed in Voice of the Martyrs bombing. (March 24, 2000)