GLOBAL PRAYER NETWORK: Sudan Releases One of Two Church Leaders Arrested in December

Sabtu, 11 Juni 2016

Sudan Releases One of Two Church Leaders Arrested in December

Member of embattled church in North Khartoum freed

By Dan Wooding, Founder of ASSIST News Service

JUBA, SOUTH SUDAN (ANS - May 10, 2016) -- Sudan today (Tuesday, May 10, 2016) released one of two church leaders jailed since December, sources said.

According to Morning Star News (http://morningstarnews.org), Telahoon Nogose Kassa, head of discipleship at the embattled Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church, was released after Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) arrested him without charges on Dec. 13, 2015, according to church members.

“Finally, Telahoon is released, thanks for your prayers and hope the rest will be released,” Kassa’s brother wrote on his Facebook page.

Morning Star News says that it was “unclear” why Kassa was released, but NISS can hold detainees for up to four and a half months without judicial review, according to Human Rights Watch. Sudan was also subject to a United Nation’s Universal Periodic Review on human rights abuses last week.

Historically holding wide-ranging powers to arrest people without cause, NISS was further empowered in January 2015 by amendments to Sudan’s constitution, which designated it a regular security force with a broader mandate to combat “political and social threats.” Said to be staffed by hard-line Islamists, NISS is known for its torture and other abusive tactics.

The news service went on to say that NISS agents went to the home of the 36-year-old Kassa the night of Dec. 13, 2015, and told him to report to their offices, sources said. When he went to a NISS office the following day, they said, officials arrested him and took him to a detention center in Khartoum.

“NISS officials gave no reasons for the arrest, though they questioned him for five consecutive days about his relationship with a foreign missionary who had attended a discipleship class, sources said. They believe he was targeted for his Christian activities and his opposition to government interference with his church,” said the story.

Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church has fought a government takeover of its property. Kassa’s arrest came four months after two South Sudanese pastors, the Rev. Peter Yein Reith and the Rev. Yat Michael, were released following eight months in prison on false charges of capital crimes due to their efforts to defend the church against the illegal sale of its property.

Michael, 49, was arrested in December 2014 after encouraging Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church; the church was the subject of government harassment, arrests and demolition of part of its worship center as Muslim investors have tried to take it over. Reith, 36, was arrested on Jan. 11, 2015 after submitting a letter from South Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church leaders inquiring about the whereabouts of Michael.

A pastor with another church who was arrested in December remains in detention without charges. Authorities arrested the Rev. Hassan Abdelrahim Tawor, vice-moderator of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC), at his home on Dec. 18, 2015. No charges have been brought against him, although NISS officials were said to have objected to his Christian activities.

Morning Star News said that NISS had also required another SCOC leader, the Rev. Kwa Shamaal, to report daily. He was arrested on Dec. 18, 2015, and released on Dec. 21st, but had been required to report daily to a NISS office, where he was held from 8 a.m. until midnight. That requirement was removed on Jan. 16, 2016.

Many SCOC and other church members are from the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan, where the government is fighting an insurgency. Ethnic Nuba, along with Christians, face discrimination in Sudan, where President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to adopt a stricter version of sharia (Islamic law) and recognize only Islamic culture and the Arabic language.

Shamaal’s church building was demolished in the Hai Thiba Al Hamyida area of Khartoum North on June 29-30, 2014. After bulldozing a Lutheran Church of Sudan (LCS) building on Oct. 21, 2015, authorities in the Karari area of Omdurman demolished an SCOC building on Oct. 27, 2015 without prior warning, church leaders said. Local authorities said the SCOC building was on government land, a claim that church leaders adamantly denied. The SCOC church was established in 1998.

“Harassment, arrests and persecution of Christians have intensified since the secession of South Sudan in July 2011. The Sudanese Minister of Guidance and Endowments announced in April 2013 that no new licenses would be granted for building new churches in Sudan, citing a decrease in the South Sudanese population,” said Morning Star News.

“Sudan since 2012 has expelled foreign Christians and bulldozed church buildings on the pretext that they belonged to South Sudanese. Sudan fought a civil war with the South Sudanese from 1983 to 2005, and in June 2011, shortly before the secession of South Sudan the following month, the government began fighting a rebel group in the Nuba Mountains that has its roots in South Sudan.

“Due to its treatment of Christians and other human rights violations, Sudan has been designated a Country of Particular Concern by the U.S. State Department since 1999, and the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom recommended the country remain on the list in its 2016 report.”

Sudan ranked eighth on Christian support organization Open Doors’ 2016 World Watch List of countries where Christians face most persecution.

Photo captions: 1) Released: Telahoon Nogose Kassa. 2) Sudanese Church of Christ building in Omdurman being demolished. 3) Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church vigil.. 4) Norma and Dan Wooding outside their Southern California home.

About the writer: Dan Wooding, 75, is an award-winning winning author, broadcaster and journalist who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, and is now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for nearly 53 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter (both born in Birmingham), and six grandchildren, who all live in the UK. Dan is the founder and international director of the ASSIST News Service (ANS), and the author or co-author of some 45 books. Dan has a radio show and two TV shows, all based in Southern California.