Sudan charges Western churches using humanitarian cover in Darfur

KHARTOUM, Dec 25 (AFP) — Western churches are using humanitarian cover to proselytise among the distressed population of Sudan’s Muslim-majority Darfur, the official SUNA news agency reported Saturday.

A displaced Sudanese girl plays at the nutritional center of French international organization Action contre la Faim in Nyala town in Sudan’s south Darfur region. (AFP).

The agency quoted a senior official in North Darfur state, Al-Nur Mohammed Ibrahim, as lashing out at “missionary campaigns being launched by some Western church organisations under the cover of humanitarian action.”

The local social and cultural affairs minister said the authorities had devised an urgent plan to stem the phenomenon and to defend Islam against the alleged missionary effort.

The plan would promote “comprehensive enlightenment and virtuous values while demonstrating the danger of the suspected church organisations’ practices and monitoring their performance,” Ibrahim said.

The official charged that such churches had focused missionary activities on camps sheltering hundreds of thousands of people who have been displaced by civil war in Darfur.

“Attempts by Western institutions for shaking the faith of the Sudanese people and the Darfurians will not succeed as the people of Darfur firmly adhere to their beneficient faith (Islam),” he said.

As quoted by SUNA, the plan does not suggest that restrictions might be imposed on the suspected organisations, which Ibrahim did not name.

During recent peace talks held with rebel movements under the aegis of the African Union, Khartoum signed humanitarian protocols urging local authorities to facilitate relief operations.

The Sudanese government, which has been threatened with sanctions over its involvement in atrocities perpetrated against civilians in Darfur, has consistently accused Western states of waging a neo-colonial war in the region.

In October, President Omar al-Beshir said the West was engaging in missionary work in Darfur and charged that Islamic aid organisations had been prevented from contributing to the relief effort.

Darfur is predominantly Muslim but some Sudanese Islamic aid organisations have also faced accusations of exploiting the humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s mainly Christian and animist south to make Muslim converts.