The site www.manna.vandaal.nl, quoted the German Christian aid group Hilfsaktion Martyrerkirche (HMK), or ‘Relief Work Martyr Church’, as saying that the military only provides goods to minority Christians who convert to Islam, the main religion in Sudan.
HMK Director Manfred Müller said Christians "first have to enter a mosque and announce loudly and publicly the Islamic statement of faith." He said they have to confirm their ‘conversion’ with a thumb impression.
"If they refuse to abandon Christianity, they will not receive food and in some even drinking water," he said at a conference on missions in the German town of Leinfelden near Stuttgart. His organization has learned that several water centers are controlled by the military.
THOUSANDS FLEE
It was not immediately clear Tuesday, June 24, whether Christians had died or how many had fled the country because of the apparent new policy. Yet, thousands of Sudanese Christians have fled the region during previous conflicts, including to Israel where this month news emerged that a new wave of refugees had arrived.
Proposed new legislation in Israel would make African refugees subject to hefty prison sentences with especially tough sentences for those coming from states regarded as enemies, such as Sudan.
The representative of southern Sudanese refugees in Israel, Majier Pap, urged the Israeli government to reconsider its planned policy. “We are South Sudanese, mostly Christians, persecuted by a regime of Muslim fundamentalists, who are bitter enemies of Israel—we are, to all intents and purposes, your allies,” he wrote in an open letter.
NEW CIVIL WAR?
It comes amid fears of a new civil war after reported clashes in southern Sudan. An estimated two million people died in 20 years of fighting between the Christian south and Muslim north. United Nations special representative Ashraf Qazi has visited what remains of the southern sudanese town of Abiye, following fighting there in May between government and local forces.
"We have just returned from downtown city center, as it were, of Abyei and it doesn’t exist anymore," he told reporters. "It is totally charred, it is totally devastated and it’s an absolutely human tragedy and it is something that must never happen again."
The Abye region is rich in oil–an estimated $670 million in oil revenue was believed generated here in 2006. However the south hasn’t seen any of that money because the Sudanese government rejected an international determination that placed Abyei in the semi-autonomous south, the American Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) reported. (With additional reporting by BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos).
