Sudanese authorities have released one of two pastors detained in December, sources said.
Rev Kwa Shamaal, head of missions for the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC), was arrested on 18th December and released on 21st December but had been required to report daily to the office of the National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS), where he was held from 8am until midnight, sources said. That requirement was removed on 16th January.
His colleague, Rev Hassan Abdelrahim Tawor, SCOC vice-moderator, remains in detention without charges.
NISS officials were said to have been upset with the pastors for telling others that Christians faced persecution in Sudan. Authorities had arrested the two pastors from their respective homes at the same hour. No charges have been brought against them, although NISS officials were said to have objected to their Christian activities.
Since their arrest last year, Christians in Sudan and elsewhere have been praying fervently for the two pastors and for other Christians jailed in Sudan.
“Please do your best in prayer, and leave the rest to almighty God,” one leader said to his prayer group.
“We really miss you very much, my dad,” Abdelrahim’s son wrote in a Facebook post.
Both church leaders are from the Nuba Mountain region of South Kordofan state. Ethnic Nuba, along with Christians, face discrimination in Sudan, where President Omar al-Bashir has vowed to adopt a stricter version of sharia (Islamic law) and recognize only Islamic culture and the Arabic language.
Shamaal’s church building was demolished in the Hai Thiba Al Hamyida area of Khartoum North in June, 2014.
Last year, after bulldozing a Lutheran Church of Sudan (LCS) building on 21st October, authorities in the Karari area of Omdurman demolished an SCOC building on 27th October without prior warning, church leaders said. Local authorities said the SCOC building was on government land, a claim church leaders adamantly denied.
The Nuba people have longstanding complaints against Khartoum – including neglect, oppression and forced conversions to Islam in a 1990s jihad – but as Sudanese citizens on the northern side of the border, they were never given the option of secession in the 2005 peace pact between northern and southern Sudan.
