Franklin Graham to visit Sudan
CHARLOTTE, N.C., Dec 01, 2003 (AP) — Evangelist Franklin Graham, long an outspoken critic of Sudan’s Islamic government, hopes to encourage peace with a holiday season visit to the war-ravaged African country.
Graham plans to travel to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum this month, along with a shipment of shoeboxes filled with gifts from American children that is part of his annual “Operation Christmas Child.” He was invited by the Sudanese government and is to meet with the country’s president, Omar el-Bashir, and faith leaders during a visit that he said will last less than a week.
Details of the visit, including the precise dates Graham will be in Sudan and where he will visit, are still being worked out.
Graham, the son and successor of Billy Graham, has been involved in international aid for decades through his Samaritan’s Purse charity. He said there are high hopes that a comprehensive peace settlement in Sudan’s long-running civil war will be signed early next year.
Samaritan’s Purse runs a hospital in the rebel stronghold of southern Sudan, as well as aid operations in the disputed Nuba Mountain and Blue Nile regions.
“The government has made great strides and I think it’s important to recognize efforts made on behalf of peace,” Graham told The Associated Press last week. “That doesn’t mean that I agree with their actions of the past. But you can’t go back and right every wrong and unscramble eggs. There is a chance for peace, and I believe every one of us should encourage the peace process.”
Graham has long been wary of the Sudanese government, which is based in the predominantly Muslim and Arab north of the country and has fought rebels in the mainly Christian and animist south for decades. More than 2 million people have died in the latest southern conflict, which erupted in 1983 — most through war-induced famine.
Repeated bombings by government forces near the Samaritan’s Purse hospital have helped shape Graham’s view of Islam, which he infamously termed “a very evil and wicked religion” in a television interview shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
“Long before the events of 9-11 that shook the very heart and soul of this nation, I learned firsthand how some followers of Islam express their faith,” Graham wrote in his 2002 book, “The Name.”
“The Islamic government of Sudan has purposely targeted Christians and minorities of other faiths.”
Since the 2001 attacks, Sudan has been accused of cooperating in the war against terror, and the country’s government is eager to resume full diplomatic and business relations with the United States, which reopened its embassy in Khartoum last year.
This is the second straight December that Graham has been invited to make an official visit to Khartoum.
“I was invited last year and due to a bombing near our hospital I declined the invitation,” he said. “They called again maybe at the end of September, beginning of October. I was called by the foreign minister,” Mustafa Osman Ismail.
After seeking advice from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn. — a surgeon who visited the Samaritan’s Purse hospital in Sudan in August — White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove and the State Department and CIA, Graham decided to visit.
He does not intend to be a silent guest.
“I’m not going with my eyes closed,” he said. “I’ve been working in that part of the world a long time. I’m going to ask specific things on behalf of the Christians when I meet privately with the president.”
Graham declined to say what he would request, but said he will make his concerns known publicly after he meets with el-Bashir.
Graham said the Bible leaves no doubt that the Christmas season is a time for peacemaking.
“Jesus said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers,”’ Graham said. “I think this is a very appropriate time to go and to remind everyone of what the price that God paid for peace, and that was by sending his son to Earth. …
“As a Christian, I believe that if Jesus Christ were here today on Earth like he was 2000 years ago you would find him at these places where the need is great,” Graham added. “You wouldn’t find him at Newport Beach or in Hollywood. I think you would find him in the Baghdads of this world, the Sudans of the world.”