Catholic World News

Hundreds of thousands of Christians ordered to leave Sudan

March 13, 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 (1983-2005) 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.

“We are very concerned,” said Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok of Khartoum. “Moving is not easy ... people have children in school. They have homes ... It is almost impossible.”

“We want the rights of these people addressed by the two parliaments,” he added. “Everyone has a right to choose where they want to live. It is a human right.”

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