_WORLD WATCH______________________________
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Demonstration brings flogging
Riot caused by transfer of Easter services
Dozens of people were arrested and others injured after thousands of Christians from across Sudan began protesting in front of a Catholic church in central Khartoum during Holy Week. Their protests were touched off by an order from the Muslim government demanding that Easter services which had been scheduled to take place in the urban church be moved into a less accessible church in the suburbs.
The Christians’ protests began on Tuesday of Holy Week, immediately after the government order was issued. When the first round of demonstrations resulted in 40 arrests, the protests became violent. Some of the Christian demonstrators began throwing stones at cars, and police moved in to disperse the crowds, using tear gas and riot batons; 13 more arrests were made.
The secretary-general of the Sudan Council of Churches, Enock Tombe Stethen, said the administrators of All Saints parish had refused to transfer their Easter celebration to a new site because the government had not given them adequate notice, and because the proposed suburban venue was “unsuitable.” Government officials claimed the order was issued for security reasons—”to avoid a confrontation between Muslims and Christians.”
The government blamed the Holy Week riots on Western human-rights groups, saying that foreign instigators have tried to portray the civil war in Sudan as a religious war. This, Interior Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein said, is an “oversimplification.”
The 53 Christians who were arrested during the protests were quickly convicted of rioting, and punished by flogging. Four women and two children received 15 lashes each before they were released. Authorities meted out 20 lashes each to the 47 men who were arrested, and sentenced them to 20-day jail terms.
Bishop’s plane attacked
Raid disrupts Easter visit
An airplane that had been carrying the bishop of El Obeid, Sudan, was nearly caught in an attack on an airfield in the African country’s Nuba Mountains by government bombers on Easter Monday.
Bishop Macram Max Gassis and his entourage were uninjured in the attack, but a militiaman was killed and two civilians injured. The bishop was making an Easter pastoral visit to rural parishes in the mountains. The group was on its way to northern Bahr al-Ghazal to celebrate Easter with Catholics there. Without warning, six anti-personnel bombs were dropped just beyond the end of the dirt landing strip, detonating not more than 500 feet from the plane. The bishop’s plane took off immediately, before the bomber could make a second run.
Sudanese government bombers have waged a terror campaign against civilian targets in rebel-held areas, destroying schools, churches, and villages and leaving dozens of men, women, and children dead or injured.
Bishop Gassis himself was almost certainly the main target of the Easter Monday bombing. The bishop is viewed by the Khartoum regime as a dangerous enemy, and an obstacle to government plans for the pacification of the resource-rich Nuba region. Bishop Gassis is wanted by the regime, and has exercised his ministry by making quick visits into his diocese from bases outside Sudan.
However, in this case the bishop might not have been the only target of the government bombers. Among the local dignitaries who had gathered at the airfield to see the bishop off was the new governor of the rebel-held province, Abdel Aziz el-Hillu, whose organizational skills have also been a source of dismay to the Khartoum regime.