ICC Note: Christians in Sudan suffer some of the worst persecution in Africa and many feel like the world doesn’t care. Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir is notorious for his systematic campaign targeting especiall black Christians trying to fully Islamize and Arabize the country. Not only has this agenda come into focus with the years of genocide that Sudan has perpetrated in Darfur, but for the last four years, the majority-Christian South Kordofan state has experienced airstrikes, which has created a humanitarian catastrophe where more than one million people may be internally displaced.
9/2/15 South Kordofan, Sudan (World Watch Monitor) – The recent trial of nine young Christian women in the Sudanese capital Khartoum for wearing trousers and skirts – deemed “indecent or immoral dress” – brought fresh attention to the plight of Sudan’s Christian minority.
The nine women were from the Nuba Mountains in Sudan’s South Kordofan state, described by Operation World as “an island of mostly Christian peoples in a sea of Islam”.
The Nuba Mountain region was one of the key disputed areas between North and South Sudan, but eventually went to the North, becoming part of the Islamic Republic of Sudan. Since South Sudan’s independence in summer 2011, Sudan’s government – led by Omar al-Bashir, the only sitting President wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity – has waged a “relentless” bombing campaign on the South Kordofan region, according to a July report by Amnesty International (AI).
“Since the start of the [four-year] conflict, the civilian population in South Kordofan has been living in desperate conditions, fleeing from relentless bombardment and seeking refuge inside foxholes and caves, with limited access to food, water, and medical care,” according to AI’s report, Don’t We Matter? Four Years of Unrelenting Attacks Against Civilians in Sudan’s South Kordofan State.
AI estimates that “at least one-third of the state’s population of 1.4 million people may be internally displaced … living in precarious and insecure conditions in which food and other humanitarian needs are often unmet and communities remain vulnerable to ongoing armed attacks”.
After a recent visit to the area, Christian charity Open Doors International reported that “daily” and “indiscriminate” bombardment has led to the destruction of Christians’ homes, churches, schools, hospitals and crops.
