Police Beat, Arrest Evangelist in Sudan

By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries

Compass Direct News (CDN) is reporting that this week Police beat and arrested a church leader in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum.
Sources told Compass that evangelist James Kat of the Evangelical Church of Sudan was arrested on Tuesday morning (Jan. 17), with officers beating him as they took him to a North Division police station.

"He was released on bail the same day. Kat, who lives at the church site, was apparently arrested for using the place as his home," said the story. "Another church leader was arrested on Monday (Jan. 16) in a Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church (SPEC) church property dispute in which police and courts have been unjustly biased in favor of Muslims, Christian leaders said."

Officers, said CDN, arrested SPEC worker Gabro Haile Selassie, as he lives on the church property that has been transferred to a Muslim businessman in a disputed agreement; he has refused to be evicted without police providing him an official document indicating the basis for the action. Selassie, who was released on bail after a few hours, said he fears being arrested again; officers have already started demolishing the church compound fence, Selassie added.

"They will definitely demolish my house" he told Compass. Armed police were deployed Sunday evening (Jan.15) to the site to take the property by force, as authorities are supporting Muslim businessman Osman al Tayeb's efforts to take control of the plot as part of a planned confiscation of church property, church leaders said.

"The government is still trying to get involved in the affairs of the church by supporting people like Osman al Tyab," said one church leader.
Christians are facing growing threats from both Muslim communities and Islamist government officials who have long wanted to rid Sudan of Christianity, Christian leaders told Compass. They said Christianity is now regarded as a foreign religion following the departure of 350,000 people, most of them Christians, to South Sudan since the secession.

Sudan's Interim National Constitution holds up sharia (Islamic law) as a source of legislation, and the laws and policies of the government favor Islam, according to the U.S. State Department's most recent International Religious Freedom Report.
For more information, please go to: www.compassdirect.org.