{"id":20022154,"date":"2022-12-28T14:31:07","date_gmt":"2022-12-28T13:31:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging-new.dabangasudan.org\/?p=20022154"},"modified":"2022-12-29T14:38:40","modified_gmt":"2022-12-29T13:38:40","slug":"houses-raided-over-christmas-in-sudans-blue-nile-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dabangasudan.org\/en\/all-news\/article\/houses-raided-over-christmas-in-sudans-blue-nile-region","title":{"rendered":"Houses raided over Christmas in Sudan’s Blue Nile region"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North under the leadership of Malik Agar (SPLM-N Agar) in the Blue Nile region has condemned police raids on homes of South Sudanese Christians in Sennar.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The raids took place during Christmas celebrations on Sunday. Amani El Sadig, deputy head of the SPLM-N Agar in Sennar, urged the state authorities to reveal the reasons for the incident and prevent their recurrence in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three women and a man were detained and released after imposing fines ranging from SDG20,000 (approx. USD35) to SDG30,000, said El Sadig in a press statement on Tuesday.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

El Sadig also called for a Commission for Religious Freedoms to be formed in accordance with the stipulations in the Juba Peace Agreement, signed by the SPLM-N Agar, a number of other rebel movements, and the Sudanese government on October 3, 2020. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On June 22, the New York-based African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS) reported that police forces raided a church<\/a> in Zalingei and detained four Christian men whom they found praying. The men were charged with apostasy, as the police insisted that they had converted from Islam to Christianity even though they maintained that they are Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Radio Dabanga reported on the violent suppression of freedoms<\/a> that characterised the 30-year regime of Omar Al Bashir increasing again in all levels of society in July. The following month, ACJPS called for urgent investigations<\/a> into “suspicious circumstances\u2019” surrounding the deaths of Pastor Azrag Barnabas and his three children in Central Darfur. According to a postmortem report, Azrag may have been poisoned before falling ill and dying in November 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Omar Al Bashir took power through a military coup in 1989, Sudan witnessed a significant clampdown on religious freedoms in which Sudanese Christians<\/a> were greatly persecuted. During the transitional government that followed, Christians began to receive better protection from the Sudanese authorities and the crime of apostasy was decriminalised. Renouncing Islam had been punishable by flogging, imprisonment, and death in Sudan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDespite this amendment, Sudanese security agencies have continued to harass Christians by raiding churches and arresting individuals who have converted from Islam to Christianity,\u201d ACJPS stated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* USD 1 = SDG 448.74 at the time of publishing this article. As effective foreign exchange rates can vary in Sudan, Radio Dabanga bases all SDG currency conversions on the daily US Dollar rate quoted by the Central Bank of Sudan (CBoS)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n