Archbishops appeal to government, international community as Sudanreferendum approaches

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

Archbishops appeal to government, international
community as Sudan approaches referendum

Posted On : October 8, 2010 10:49 AM | Posted By : Webmaster

ACNS: http://www.aco.org/acns/news.cfm/2010/10/8/ACNS4737

> Related Categories: Sudan

With fewer than 100 days to go before southerners
in Sudan vote on whether to remain a unified
country or to separate from the north, Archbishop
Daniel Deng Bul of the Episcopal Church of Sudan
is making every effort to ensure that the Jan. 9
referendum goes ahead as planned and that peace holds in the war-torn 
count ry.

Archbishop Daniel  Deng and the Archbishop of
Canterbury Rowan Williams, who are appealing to
the international community to support the people
of Sudan, briefed media at Lambeth Palace on Oct.
7 ahead of a series of meetings with officials in
the U.K. Government's foreign office. The
meetings are intended to provide updates on the
situation on the ground in Sudan and to ensure
that the U.K. Government plays a crucial role in
supporting the peace and stability of Africa's largest nation.

The archbishops explained that the critical

issues related to the referendum include delays
in voter registration, tensions in the border
regions, and the future for some 4 million
refugees from the south who are currently living in the north.

The Archbishop of Canterbury spoke about the
danger of Sudan "sleepwalking towards disaster ?
if action does not continue from the international community."

Assuming the southerners vote for separation,
"there is no preparation at this moment for how
to receive the influx of refugees ?from the north
? back to southern Sudan," Deng said. "The
Government of Southern Sudan really has no
capacity at this moment to administer or to welcome these people."

Williams explained that a vote for separation
would mean that the status of southern refugees
in the north would be "even more vulnerable than it is at the moment."

But the threat of open war "in and after the
referendum period is the most serious thing of
all," he said, "and that signals a return to what
have been decades of slaughter and poverty and
utter instability in a very large and very vulnerable country."

The referendum is one of the major terms of

Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which was
signed in January 2005 by the two warring parties
-- the Government of Sudan in the predominantly
Muslim north and the Sudan People's Liberation
Movement in the mainly Christian south --
bringing an end to a 21-year civil war that
claimed more than 2 million lives and displaced about 7 million 
people.

The agreement also called for the equitable

distribution of oil revenues, drawing of fair
borders, the development of democratic governance
throughout the country, and the reconstruction of
devastated infrastructure. The north has been
criticized for failing to live into the terms of the peace agreement.

The U.K. Government, Williams said, "has a good
and strong record of supporting the
implementation of the Comprehensive Peace
Agreement ? and this is no time at all to ease up
the pressure on what our government can give in this way."

> Acknowledging that Britain takes over the
> presidency of the U.N. Security Council in
> November, Williams said: "There is a good
> opportunity for Britain to show leadership ... I
> would like to see and I have confidence I will
> see our government stepping up to the plate and
> do the sort of monitoring that is needed in Sudan."

Earlier in the week, Deng attended the

Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham where
he lobbied and met with U.K. Members of Parliament.

The Rev. Ian Woodward, a priest in the Diocese of
Salisbury, which has a 37-year partnership with
the Episcopal Church of Sudan, described the
meetings as "very encouraging," noting that the
U.K. Government is being "very supportive and
open to help the churches in pushing for a better
understanding of the dangers of violence if the
referendum does not proceed in time."

Woodward, who has been assisting Deng during his
visit to the U.K., told ENS that Sudan's churches
are in a unique position because they reach directly into the 
communities.

The Episcopal Church of Sudan -- with its four
million members, the vast majority of whom are
based in the south -- is considered one of the
largest non-governmental organizations in
southern Sudan and is strategically placed to
serve its people in the face of such great adversity.

> During the Lambeth media briefing, Williams
> described Deng as "a colossally effective
> advocate for Sudan, a defender of the most
> vulnerable communities in his country, an
> eloquent spokesman for church and nation."

Deng's awareness and advocacy campaign will from
Oct. 10-22 take him to New York and Washington,
D.C., where, as part of an ecumenical delegation,
he will meet with senior governmental officials
and key members of the United Nations, including Secretary General 
Ban Ki-m oon.

The other delegation members are Roman Catholic
Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok of Khartoum; Roman
Catholic Bishop Emeritus Paride Taban of Torit;
the Rev. Ramadan Chan, general secretary of the
Sudan Council of Churches; the Rev. Sam Kobia,
Sudan envoy for the All Africa Conference of
Churches (formerly general secretary of the World
Council of Churches); and John Ashworth, Sudan
advisor for Catholic Relief Services and Sudan Ecumenical Forum.

While in the New York, Deng also will preach at
Trinity Church, Wall Street, and join a panel
discussion at the Council of Foreign Relations.

Other areas of major concern in Sudan include
escalating tribal conflict and increased violence
inflicted by the Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel organization.

"The Lord's Resistance Army should not be part of
the problem of southern Sudan because [it was] a
group of rebels fighting in Uganda," Deng said
during the media briefing, acknowledging that
reports indicate the group is being funded by the
north in order to destabilize the south.

Williams called the LRA a "regional virus ?
jumping borders and very difficult to pin down."
He noted that there are three dioceses in the
Episcopal Church of Sudan where large numbers of
people have been displaced because of LRA
activity. "They're afraid to go back to their
villages to sow their crops and so forth because
of the level of indiscriminate violence that the LRA brings."

> Meanwhile, a conflict lingers in the Darfur
> region of western Sudan where northern
> government-backed Arab militia, known as
> "Janjaweed," continue to attack civilians and
> raid refugee camps. In March 2009, the
> International Criminal Court issued an arrest
> warrant for Sudan's President Omar Hasan
> al-Bashir on seven counts of war crimes and
> crimes against humanity committed in Darfur.
> Experts say the warrant is unlikely to be executed.

"The world's attention has very understandably
been on the dramatic violence in Darfur,"
Williams told the media on Oct. 7, "but because
the international community has taken its eyes
off the need to implement what has been agreed in
southern Sudan, that has simply been growing more
and more serious day by day for the last few years largely unnoticed."

Article From: ENS by Matthew Davies editor and
international correspondent of the Episcopal News Service.