Carey Challenges Sudanese Government to Make Peace a Reality
Episcopal News Service. May 25, 2000 [2000-091]
(ACNS) Declaring that his recent brief visit to Sudan had left him filled with "the sense of a war-weary country desperately looking for peace," Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey challenged Sudanese leaders to demonstrate their commitment to restoring peace and religious freedom there. He also issued a clear call to both Muslims and Christians there to "discover common ground" and work for peace.
Carey, who had journeyed to Africa for the April 30 enthronement of the new Anglican archbishop and primate of Sudan, Joseph Marona, also spoke with government leaders and visited a refugee camp.
"I have been talking to a number of very significant leaders," he told a reporter as he traveled home to England after the two-day visit. "I came away feeling a sense of a war-weary country desperately looking for peace -- and a feeling that the government is also beginning to soften its attitude to some degree. They are very sensitive now to the image that Sudan has in the rest of the world, an image of a country where abductions are taking place, and where there is no freedom of religion, and they're very anxious to say that that is not the case. My challenge to them is that we need to have proof of that."
In his sermon during the enthronement in the southern Sudanese city of Juba, Carey called for misconceptions and misunderstandings to be put aside in the interests of peace and reconciliation.
"Some people in the West paint the conflict in Sudan as one between Christianity and Islam," he said. "Some in this country claim that Islam is the indigenous faith of Sudan and Christianity is a western import. Neither view is true.
"I do not believe there is any reason either here in Sudan or anywhere else in the world for Christians and Muslims to commit violence against one another. There is every reason to hold one another's faith in the deepest respect. And even more reason to discover common ground upon which together you can contribute to the peace process here. The suffering, the poverty, the effects of war do not differentiate between religions. All the people of this beautiful country are suffering and all deserve peace."
Carey was guest of honor at the enthronement. He described it as the opening of a new chapter in the history of the Church in the Sudan.
The seat had been vacant for two years -- largely as a consequence of the devastating civil war, which is estimated to have cost more than a million lives and left several million people homeless and destitute. Much of the area surrounding Juba is held by forces opposed to the pro-Islamic government, and access to the city has been difficult.
Carey, making his first visit to Sudan for five years, rejected discrimination against the country's Christian minority and appealed to churches to keep working together for an end to bloodshed and violence.
"The united witness of Christians in this country is of prime importance in the search for peace. I know how difficult life has been in many parts of the North -- schools and churches destroyed, land confiscated and so on. I am glad to know that Christians of different traditions have turned out to support one another in their protests when these wrongs have been committed."
Carey said there were reasons for hope:
"I know that for long periods of your recent history, you have felt abandoned, alone, unloved by the rest of the world. I do not think that has ever been the case. But I do understand how, when many have lived your daily lives in fear of violence, oppression and arrest, the love and prayers of others can seem a great distance away.
"However, there has been a distinct growth of concern in the international community about the persistence of war in Sudan, and the lack of energy amongst those who are fighting, seriously, to search for peace. There are now many around the world who are determined to support the peace process."
Carey flew to Juba from the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, where he had had talks the day before with government leaders, and preached at an ecumenical service in the Roman Catholic cathedral.
He also toured a refugee camp near Khartoum for thousands of displaced families and visited a school and a local church.
"The level of despair was almost palpable," he said after the trip.
Despite the government's new attempts to repair its image, he noted, "There's a feeling on the part of so many people that the situation is getting worse and worse. I spoke to some camp elders as well as some very depressed teachers who told me not only about feeling displaced, but all the tribes feeling that they are 'rootless trees.' They are appealing to the wider world to assist them, to pray for them and send aid, but most of all to bring this terrible war to an end."