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SUDAN
Appeal for helpAnglican bishop appeals to US Christians
An Anglican bishop from Sudan appealed to the United States to come to the aid of Christians in the African country he said were being persecuted by the ruling Muslim majority.
Bishop Peter Munde of Yambio, Sudan, told the General Convention of the US Episcopal Church, part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, that the effect of the 17-year-long civil war has been brutal on average citizens. “Persecution isn’t something that we can read about in the Bible or a book—it is in our lives,” he said. “They arrest the Christians, they rape the girls.”
More than 1.5 million people are estimated to have died in the war between the mainly Arab north with its Islamist government in Khartoum and mainly Christian rebels in the south.
Munde said the government prevents food and aid shipments from reaching the impoverished south. “We are asking the Anglican community not to forget us, to pray for us, to speak on our behalf,” the bishop said, adding that he believed the United Nations or the United States could help stop the hostilities if they wanted to. But he said forces in the north have more resources. “They are very rich. We have nothing.”
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