Originally published in One News Now
A persecution watchdog group is launching a new campaign to stop dozens of church demolitions in Sudan.
The grassroots effort by International Christian Concern is designed to raise awareness of ongoing threats by the Sudanese government to thrash churches in and around the capital city of Khartoum.
ICC’s Isaac Woodward tells One News Now that in one month alone — September 2016 — some 27 churches were notified that they were violating zoning ordinances or something to that effect.
“They were going to be subject to demolition,” Woodward says. “Now in almost all these cases, the churches hadn’t been given any warning.”
He points out that Christian churches are the ones specifically targeted by the Islamic-led government, which ICC has documented is growing more openly anti-Christian in recent years.
“In many cases,” he adds, “churches supposedly violating ordinances for having people meet there are close to mosques (that) are under the exact same categories and doing the exact same things — just having Muslims meet there rather than Christians. And yet they’re not being subject to any harassments.”
ICC’s campaign calls on people to contact the Sudanese embassy in Washington, DC, and request an immediate halt on the destruction of Christian churches.