wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Sudanese church leaders warn of refugee crisis in south

[PCUSA NEWS <PCUSA.NEWS@ECUNET.ORG>]

Note #8909 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05489
Sept. 19, 2005

Sudanese church leaders 
warn of refugee crisis in south  
  
by Fredrick Nzwili
Ecumenical News International  

NAIROBI - Sudanese churches are warning of a looming humanitarian catastrophe
because of a government crackdown that has prompted a stream of refugees to
flee from the northern part of the country to the south.  
  
	"Their safety is being threatened and their property taken away,"
Henry Danima, a spokesman for the Khartoum-based Sudan Council of Churches
(SCC) said in Nairobi. He said the crackdown came after the death last month
of Vice President John Garang, which sparked rioting in Khartoum and in Juba,
the designated capital of South Sudan, an area inhabited mainly by black
Africans.   
  
	Garang had become vice president just three weeks before as part of
an agreement ending a three-decades-long civil war between the predominantly
Arab and Muslim north and the rebel movement in the south, where Christianity
and traditional religions are predominant. Garang was a principal leader of
the rebels. 
   
	After the riots, security forces targeted camps holding internally
displaced people from the south, Danima said.  
   
	The Sudan Ecumenical Forum, an organization of foreign partners of
Sudan's churches, said on Sept. 7 that thousands of refugees escaped to the
south on foot, although no measures had been taken to meet their needs for
food and medicine.

	"There is lack of support to enable them go where they want to," said
the Rev. Musa Kodi Jura, the SCC chair. "If support is not found, it is going
to be even harder for them."

	The Rev. Anthony Bangoye, general secretary of the Nairobi-based
Sudan Catholic Bishops' Regional Conference, said churches have been urging
local communities in the south to share facilities with the refugees. "This
will show them they are welcome back home," he said.   
  
	Church leaders also warned that a conflict in Uganda involving a
rebel group called the Lords Resistance Army, which has been launching
attacks against the Ugandan army from southern Sudan, is destabilizing the
region and threatening to become a regional war.

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