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WCC's Raiser tells Khartoum to end injustices
2002-171-2
7/9/2002
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[Episcopal News Service]
World Council of Churches General Secretary Konrad Raiser has told the Sudanese government to end its policy of political exclusion and social injustice.
Raiser, who is on a July 1-16 pastoral visit to the Greater Horn of Africa and Tanzania, expressed his concerns during a July 2 meeting with the Sudanese government minister of Guidance and Endowments, Dr. Issam El Bashir, in Khartoum.
Raiser described the 18-year religious conflict in Sudan as a deceptive facade used by Khartoum's government while actively engaged in exacerbating all kinds of inequalities. He also told the minister that unfair distribution of wealth was yet another factor which must be addressed.
Addressing an ecumenical gathering organized by the Sudanese Council of Churches (SCC), Raiser noted that Sudanese peace talks had become 'endless,' and stressed the WCC's commitment to conflict resolution and reconstruction of war-ravaged southern Sudan. The protracted conflict between the Arab Muslims in the north and mostly Christian population in the South has killed an estimated two million southerners and produced one of Africa's largest refugee population, estimated at over half a million.
The WCC delegation also visited the Dar-es-Salaam camp for displaced people in Omdurman, Sudan province. It has a population of 250,000 people with a single clinic for tuberculosis cases. Describing the camp as a second hell, Raiser noted that the effects of two decades of war are pitifully evident on the faces of the children. For many of them, 'the breath of hope is decreasing day by day,' Raiser observed.
The SCC expressed concern that the exploitation of oil, located in the south, is being used to sustain the war against southerners. In a message to the WCC delegation signed by leaders of 14 member churches, the SCC stressed that 'the recent battles in Western Upper Nile region, where most of the oil wells are located, justify our concern...' Noting that the root cause of the civil war 'is uneven socioeconomic development' caused by 'unfair distribution of wealth,' the council stressed that oil exploitation 'is aggravating that imbalance in wealth distribution and contributing to the underdevelopment of the marginalized areas.'
The SCC went on to stress that religious freedom for non-Muslims remains restricted in Sudan. 'Permits for building churches are not given and some of the old church properties built during the British colonial rule have been confiscated. Education syllabuses, they noted, 'have been Islamized without due regard to Christian students.' The council pointed out that 'the state now favors Islam as a state religion. As Islam and Arabism are combined to project Sudanese identity, Africanism and Christianity are ignored. These two elements of identity (Islam and Arabism) have been utilized for control of power and wealth in Sudan.'
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