Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 120 | Wed 10 Aug 2011

By Elizabeth Kendal

[For background see RLPB 113 (22 June 2011) & RLPB 117 (20 July 2011)
http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com ]

Daily bombing raids targeting the Nuba populations of South Kordofan have
resulted in significant loss of life and destruction of properties,
including homes, crops and livestock. While the UN estimates that some
73,000 Nuba have been displaced, the former deputy governor of South
Kordofan, Abdel Aziz el-Hilu, estimates the figure is closer to 500,000.
Nuba seeking to flee the region are being intercepted and killed at
roadblocks. Numerous tens of thousands of Nuba, many of whom are wounded,
have been forced to seek shelter in hillside caves where they have nothing
to eat but grass and leaves. The rainy season is making survival even more
difficult. Furthermore the Government of Sudan (GoS) has sealed off the
region so that humanitarian aid cannot get in. Without intervention, mass
starvation will be inevitable.

The GoS has considerable experience in waging genocide. Scorched earth
warfare followed by denial of humanitarian aid has been used in the Nuba
Mountains (early 1990s), Bahr el-Ghazal (South Sudan, 1998) and Darfur to
kill many tens of thousands of Africans in just a few months. Yet while
Khartoum is engineering a famine in the Nuba Mountains, it is also
congratulating itself for pouring aid worth nearly two million dollars
into famine relief in Somalia (Sudan Tribune, 28 July). That too is
standard for Khartoum which routinely starves its own people while
exporting food and receiving food aid.

[See ‘Why is Akobo hungry?’ 9 April 2010  http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.
com/2010/04/south-sudan-why-is-akobo-hungry.html ]

Whilst the GoS’s motive is greed and its goal is the theft of resource-
rich land, it recruits fighters amongst Arab-Islamists with the language
of Islamic jihad. In April 1992 Muslim clerics in South Kordofan issued a
fatwa for the GoS that legitimised killing the Nuba as ‘apostates’
[Muslims not supporting the regime] and ‘infidels [unbelievers] who stand
as a bulwark against the spread of Islam’. Today the Nuba are again being
labelled rebels and infidels, and are being targeted by Islamic jihad to
facilitate the ethnic cleansing of this resource-rich region.

Bradford Phillips is the founder and president of Persecution Project
Foundation and the director (Sudan) of Voice of the Martyrs. He recently
returned from 12 days in the Nuba Mountains. On Thursday 4 August he gave
eye- witness testimony to a US House of Representatives subcommittee on
Africa, Global Health and Human Rights. To Phillips ‘the issue is
genocide’. He is gravely concerned about the humanitarian crisis facing
Sudan’s largest Christian community. ‘There are 70,000 to 90,000 people
that are probably going to die in the next month to two months,’ he warns.
Local Nuba told Phillips the GoS views the church as an extension of the
Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement which the GoS deems a ‘foreign’ force,
although it is not. Phillips heard stories of pastors being arrested and
horrifically tortured by soldiers seeking to extract the names of church
members. Refusing to betray their flock, many pastors have been
imprisoned, whilst some have died under torture or been executed.

Also testifying before the House Committee was Bishop Andudu Adam Elnail,
the Anglican Bishop of Kadugli. Andudu has been told soldiers searched for
him house-to-house. He believes that had he not been in the US for medical
treatment he would now be lying in a mass grave. Bishop Andudu is pleading
for intervention.

Like other Sudan experts Brad Phillips is calling for action that will
destroy Khartoum’s Antonov bombers. Dedicated religious liberty and
persecuted church advocate Congressman Frank R Wolf pleaded passionately
for the Church to stand up and speak up for its persecuted brothers and
sisters in Sudan. As Phillips told a CBN interview on 6 August, the most
important thing the Church can do is ‘intercede through prayer’.

[For more information on the 4 August hearing with links to transcripts
and videos, see Religious Liberty Monitoring
http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.com ]

PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD WILL —

* draw the Nuba and the global Church into dependent prayer for divine
intervention; for the LORD will surely rise to show compassion at the
sound of our cry (Isaiah 30:18,19). May Khartoum’s bombers be
neutralised and Omar el-Bashir’s arrogant and racist reign of terror
be ended. (Psalm 10)

‘Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold,
his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will tend his
flock like a shepherd; he will gather the lambs in his arms; he will carry
them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.’ (Isaiah
40:10,11 ESV)

* provide displaced Nuba with their every need of shelter, food, healing
and protection; may he ease their anxiety, bring rest to their souls
and increase their faith.

* protect Nuba pastors, hiding them from those who intend to torture and
kill them; may those imprisoned be protected and preserved,
experiencing God’s presence and being assured of his love.

~~~~

SUMMARY TO USE IN BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
———————————————————–

GENOCIDE OF NUBA BY STARVATION IN SUDAN

Continual aerial bombardment has displaced hundreds of thousands of Nuba,
the predominantly Christian African tribes indigenous to the Nuba
Mountains in Sudan’s South Kordofan State. Furthermore, the Government of
Sudan (GoS) is preventing humanitarian aid entering the region. Sudan
experts warn that if there is no intervention 70,000 or more Nuba will
starve to death within the next two months. This is exactly what the
genocidal and racist GoS wants as it pursues total control of the resource-
rich Nuba Mts. Eye-witnesses report that Christian pastors specifically
are being targeted for arrest, torture and execution, because the Church
has been labelled an enemy.   Please pray for God to intervene on behalf of
his imperilled and besieged people in the Nuba Mts.

——————–

We suggest that churches and fellowships using the above Summary might
also provide a copy of the listed prayer points to be used in their
worship by people who are leading in prayer.

For more information, updates and helpful links see Elizabeth Kendal’s
blog ‘Religious Liberty Monitoring’ <http://elizabethkendal.blogspot.com>.

Previous RLPBs may be viewed at <http://rlprayerbulletin.blogspot.com/>.

This RLPB was written for the Australian Evangelical Alliance Religious
Liberty Commission (AEA RLC) by Elizabeth Kendal, an international
religious liberty analyst and advocate, and a member of the AEA RLC team.

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