Sudan yesterday released one of two church leaders jailed since December, sources said.
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.
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.
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.
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.
NISS had also required another SCOC leader, the Rev. Kwa Shamaal, to report daily. He was arrested on Dec. 18 and released
on Dec. 21 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.
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 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.
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.
If you would like to help persecuted Christians, visit http://morningstarnews.org/resources/aid-agencies/ for a list of organizations that can orient you on how to get involved.
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