Africanews October 2000 -Sudan: Christian cemetery wanted for shopping centre

[Africanews <ramalkandy@iol.it>]

AFRICANEWS - News and Views on Africa from Africa
Issue 55 - October 2000
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Sudan
Christian cemetery wanted for shopping centre

The Sudan government decision to take over part of a Christian
cemetery has not been received kindly. Christians and local media say
the action is a violation of human rights and a disrespect to
sacredness.

Religion
By AFRICANEWS Correspondent
(735 words)

The Sudan Council of Churches (SCC) issued a strongly worded letter
last month protesting over the government's partial confiscation of
the Christian cemetery located south of Khartoum City.

In their September 12 joint letter to Khartoum State Governor Dr.
Majzoub Al-Khalifa, leaders of the SCC's nine member churches said:
"The meeting you held in our absence about our cemetery that resulted
into your negative decision to confiscate part of the cemetery is an
insult, disrespect and violation of our rights as Christians in the
Sudan."

As for "the fencing and the services you intend to do and improve, who
told you that the cemetery needs fencing?" said the letter. "Who told
you that we need the type of services you have in mind? And what made
you to think of helping Christians at this time if you do not have a
hidden agenda?"

The letter demanded that building materials already brought to the
cemetery for the construction of shops be promptly removed. "We are
not ready to part with any part of our cemetery," the letter
concluded. "It is inhuman to continue disturbing us when alive or
dead."

Khartoum's State Engineer Ali Mohmoud Samsaa had earlier written a
letter, dated July 26, to SCC General Secretary Rev. Engineer Enock
Tombe. The letter informed Tombe "of an approval granted to the
Department of Small Industries and Traders at Sahafa Residential
Areas, to construct workshops at Sahafa Christian Cemetery in return
for fencing and services within the cemetery."

The same letter requested SCC to remove "what you describe as graves"
- the "you" standing for Christians, as Muslems in Sudan do not
recognise Christian burials - at the edge of the eastern part of the
cemetery, as it would obstruct the construction of the shops.

But even before getting SCC's reaction, state authorities went ahead
with its plan. In August, it ordered the traders who got approval for
plots in the graveyard to proceed with construction work. Some
Christians alerted SCC authorities that there were bricks and other
building materials in the southern tip of the Christian Cemetery.

The governor had approved the exhumation and relocation into the
cemetery's interior of corpses lying along the strip of land between
the road and ten metres inside the cemetery. This area is the cause of
dispute between the SCC and state authorities.

Alfred Taban, Khartoum's BBC Correspondent and also a Christian from
Southern Sudan writing for the newly-established only English Daily in
the country, The Khartoum Monitor, said: "The Governor's action is an
affront to all Christians and is an unforgivable act of insensitivity
to the dead…. By demolishing those graves, Dr. Khalifa has disfigured
sacred rites that do not belong to his family. He has tampered with
the dead who are not his relatives. He has defiled our dead."

Taban also demanded that Khalifa be fired. "The least our President
Omar Al-Bashir can do to appease the angry Christian Community is to
dismiss the Governor of Khartoum at once."

Nichola Unango, also a Christian from southern Sudan, lamented the
government's decision. "My uncle's wife was buried just at the
disputed part of the cemetery in February this year," he said. "My
cousin's sister was also buried in the southern part of the same
cemetery on August 26, 1999. This action makes me feel the government
does not respect me as a person."

A communiqué SCC released on September 18 that was signed by SCC
staff, executive committee members, and representatives of the SCC's
seven regions, stated: "We, the SCC staff and Inter-Church chairmen of
the SCC seven regions, have been made aware about the Khartoum State
Government's action of confiscating part of the Christian Cemetery in
Sahafa, Khartoum.

"We are deeply shocked and disturbed by this action of the Khartoum
State authorities' decision to construct buildings for small
industries, cafeterias, restaurants and workshops inside the graveyard
as if the dead Christians did not matter in the eyes of the Moslem
authorities in the State,"  the communiqué said.

A columnist writing for the Al-Rai Al-Akhar Arabic Daily in Khartoum
attacked the behavior of the Islamist state authorities in an indirect
tone. He wrote, commenting on a complaint written earlier by a
Christian teacher from southern Sudan, Martin Mading: "How come that
Mr. Martin Mading does not know that those who do not respect our
sacredness while we are alive, can not also respect this sacredness
when we are dead?