Sudan intensifies arrests, deportations of Christians

JUBA, South Sudan — Sudan has stepped up its arrests and deportations of Christians, with interrogation including threats to bury them alive, sources said.

Besides the deportation to South Sudan of the secretary general of the Sudan Catholic Bishops’ Conference on April 12, other Christians have been targeted in the past several weeks for arrest, interrogation and/or deportation. On April 21, as a South Sudanese church elder was worshipping at a Sunday service in Khartoum, officials from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) detained him to pump him for information, the elder told Morning Star News. “They told me to reveal to them 12 names of Christians who are active in evangelism in Sudan, but I told them I have no idea,” said the elder, whose name is withheld for security reasons.

NISS officials also have required staff members of a university campus-based ministry to report to them weekly following their arrest Feb. 23; initially they were held and interrogated for a week, one said. “The security officers verbally threatened to bury us alive if we did not give information on who was supporting these Christian activities,” the Christian worker said.

After the Christian workers were released, for two weeks security officials ordered them to report to NISS offices on a daily basis for interrogation about links with Christian organizations, said the worker, whose organization’s name is withheld for security reasons. NISS officials confiscated the organization’s equipment, vehicle and documents. They also went to the home of organization members and took academic papers, laptops, digital cameras, mobile phones and iPads, among other personal belongings, he said.

Authorities deported three of the group’s workers to South Sudan in March after monitoring their movements and telephone calls, another member told Morning Star News. South Sudan’s secession has served as a pretext for Omar al-Bashir’s regime to bulldoze church buildings once owned by South Sudanese and deport Christians based on their ethnicity, sources said.