Sudan (MNN) — Sudan’s warring generals tell a U.N. political mission to “pack up and go home.” Humanitarian workers can stay, but the U.N. mission must leave Sudan before March 1, 2024.
As global attention remains riveted on the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Sudan’s atrocities go unnoticed. Hastily-dug mass graves confirmed by satellite imagery hold proof of genocide in Darfur.
“Sudanese are being killed, tortured, and displaced by their own people. The influx of refugees and displaced [people] has overwhelmed humanitarian systems. Aid workers are being killed; trucks of aid are being looted before they even get to a destination,” says John*, a Gospel worker focused on Sudan.
“That inevitable nexus – war, displaced people, lack of food, lack of water – is coming to a head.”
Yet the world remains indifferent. John describes three possible reasons why Sudan remains in the shadows. First, ignoring Sudan’s crises “is kind of a historical thing. Sudan went through two genocides by the government of Omar Bashir, and they didn’t get in the news either,” John says.
Secondly, “Sudan is not an international political figure. They’re not a greatly developed country, like Egypt or even Kenya,” he continues.
“The third thing is that the world is becoming war and refugee-weary.”
Arab militia known as Janjaweed are terrorizing Masalit communities in Sudan, particularly in the Darfur region.
(2004 U.S. State Department photo)
Will you speak up for Sudan? Genocide isn’t the only atrocity taking place, according to John’s Sudanese partners.
“The warring factions are taking this opportunity to try to eliminate the church on the ground in Sudan,” John says.
“When and if peace comes, they’re trying to make it so the church does not survive. They’re targeting and bombing significant church buildings, purposely destroying them, or confiscating them for their headquarters.”
Send relief aid through John’s organization here. Praise the Lord for sustaining hope as only He can.
“This war has driven Christians and Muslims into the same geographical areas,” John says.
“Those geographical areas are not Islam-dominated, so they (Sudanese people) have the freedom to think outside of Islam. And God is doing some absolutely amazing things.”
*Pseudonym
Header image courtesy of The Voice of the Martyrs USA.
