SUDAN INSIGHT ALERT: AP - Sudan’s Christians enjoy holiday amid hope for new freedoms

27/12/2019: AP - Sudan’s Christians enjoy holiday amid hope for new freedoms, by Mariam Fam

In a feature peace, AP spoke to Sudanese Christians from the Bahri Evangelical church, who held a symbolic march to mark the Christian holiday season.

Church elder Noah Manzul said the march was treated as if it were a “crime,” under al-Bashir’s regime, but its return is “an expression of religious freedom.”

Ezekiel Kondo, archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, said he was encouraged by government religious reform efforts but questioned whether complete religious freedom is present. He called for the legalisation of some churches, attributing the legal cases that churches are embroiled in to the inability to get permits and the required paperwork, which proved “virtually impossible” under al-Bashir.

Anurima Bhargava, a member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, said that religious reforms will “take some time to be felt,” but meetings with Hamdok on the matter were “promising.”