He warns of the possibility of “humanitarian
disaster” in the south and “real persecution” for Christians in the
north following the upcoming election.
On Sunday there will be a referendum to create an independent state of semi-autonomous southern Sudan.
On Sunday there will be a referendum to create an independent state of semi-autonomous southern Sudan.
World governments and experts on the region predict a landslide
"yes" vote, giving autonomy to the area which has been united for more
than 50 years.
The Jan. 9 - 15 vote comes five years after a landmark peace
agreement ended more than 20 years of civil war in the African nation
with the largest land area.
Autonomy will bring its trials, however, as Bishop Macram Max Gassis of El Obeid told Fides news agency in a Jan. 8 report.
The Diocese of El Obeid is in South Central Sudan and encompasses the
Darfur region, the site of ongoing conflict and humanitarian
catastrophe. Bishop Gassis’ jurisdiction borders the southern region
included in the vote.
"After the euphoria of independence we will have to face the harsh
reality of the thousands and thousands of southern Sudanese who have
returned to the South and have nothing," he said.
Truckloads of hopeful people have been returning from the North for weeks in anticipation of the vote.
But the southern Sudan they find has little to welcome them. Dropped
off "in the middle of nowhere" without any vital supplies or even
bedrolls, he said, they find an infrastructure that is already
inadequate for the existing population.
Bishop Gassis warned of the consequences if all those of South Sudanese stock return to their roots.
"If you think that just in the area of Khartoum, the capital of
united Sudan, there are about
four million southern Sudanese that could
return to the South, you understand that we are facing a potential
humanitarian disaster," said the bishop.
He explained that a five-year window before a vote for independence
was provided for in the 2005 peace agreement precisely to give the
Khartoum government time to promote unity.
"It has become the opposite," Bishop Gassis said. "It has not adopted
a policy that recognizes the needs of the diverse populations that make
up this country, which is multi-confessional, but continued to insist
on the application of Sharia."
Sharia is the Muslim rule of law, installed by then-Sudanese
President Gaafar Nimeiry in 1983.
Seventy percent of the nation’s 43
million inhabitants profess Sunni Islam while just five percent are
Christians who are divided between the capital and South Sudan.
Independence in the South could thus be devastating for Catholicism
in the northern region, where the enormous Diocese of El Obeid is
located.
The 150,000 Catholics in the diocese represent less than two
percent of the total population.
"What will become of the Church in the north, once Sudan is divided
into a Christian and animist southern state, and in a largely Muslim
northern state?" asked the bishop.
His fear is that Catholics and Copts who remain in the region risk
being singled out. A system where the Sharia law is interpreted in the
strictest sense, said Bishop Gassis, could demote them to be "second
class citizens, or worse, becoming victims of real persecution."
An additional Fides editorial published on the same day cited
experts' analysis that independence for South Sudan could open a
"Pandora's Box" of similar referenda in the rest of Africa who have been
similarly engaged in war and oppression.
"The greatest risk" in such
cases in the continent, said Fides, "is that of an instrumental use of
religion to sustain pro-independence projects."
Delegations of diplomats from all over the world including one from
the U.S., led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are on the ground
in Sudan to monitor the election.
Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier of Durban,
South Africa is at the head of a representation from the Southern
African Catholic Bishops' Conference as part of the All African
Conference of Churches, reported L'Osservatore Romano.
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