Hundreds of thousands of Christians ordered to leave Sudan
(March 14, 2012) The government of Sudan, an overwhelmingly Muslim nation, has
stripped between 500,000 and 700,000 Christians of their citizenship and ordered them
to leave for the new nation of South Sudan, according to a report from Ecumenical
News International - ENI. Two million lost their lives in the long Sudanese civil
war from 1983 to 2005 between the Muslim north and the largely animist and Christian
south. The civil war ended when President Omar Hassan Ahmad Al-Bashir, indicted by
the International Criminal Court, granted the south limited autonomy. South Sudan
gained its independence in July 2011. According to the ENI report, the government
of Sudan declared that all whose “parents, grandparents or great grandparents were
born in the South Sudan, or who belong to any southern ethnic group are no longer
citizens of Sudan and must leave the nation by April 8. Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok
of Khartoum said “We are very concerned. Moving is not easy as people have homes
and children in school, so moving is almost impossible. We want the rights of these
people addressed by the two parliaments,” he said and added. “Everyone has a right
to choose where they want to live. It is a human right.”