Update from Dane Smith
There is lots of political news out of South Sudan, but it’s a bit hard to assess. The Peoples Coalition for Civil Action issued a declaration July 30 demanding that President Kiir and Vice President Machar step down and urging a non-violent uprising. Three days later the National Security Services arrested one of the signatories, former Northern Bahr al-Ghazal governor Kuel Aguer Kuel, and shut down the Sudd Institute, a Juba-based think tank, with which a second signatory had been associated. The US Embassy called on the Government of South Sudan to respect freedom of speech and assembly and on the security services to respect constitutional guarantees of those rights.
These events have spurred commentators to warn of a crackdown on civil society and to express fears of renewed political violence.
As for Sudan, on July 31 USAID Administrator Samantha Power began a four-day visit. She expressed encouragement about the evolution of Sudan since the 2019 overthrow of dictator Omar al-Bashir. She visited both a displaced persons camp in Darfur and the Um Raquba camp in eastern Sudan where refugees from Ethiopia’s Tigray Province have gathered. She announced $56million in “life-saving US assistance” plus $4.3 million to support elections and completion of the political transition in 2024. US interest in a successful transition in Sudan remains high. Nomination of a U.S. ambassador to Khartoum, who would be the first since 1996, is expected shortly.
Executive Director
Focus Area: South Sudan: Educating War Orphans
Bishop John Gatteck and the teachers and staff of the school in the camp are busy preparing for the new school year. The funds granted by St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Annapolis have been received with deep gratitude and are already being employed to complete the construction of new classrooms and other facilities to accommodate 150 additional students in the new school year. This will bring the total student body to five hundred girls and boys in grades 1 through 8. The expanded enrollment and improved infrastructure will help the school qualify for school supplies and additional support from UNICEF and other non-governmental organizations.
Meanwhile, the school is hiring eleven additional teachers and staff to build capacity for the new students. Over forty applicants have been interviewed and are taking a written exam. In a vacancy announcement, the school is seeking teachers who have some level of teacher training and 2 to 3 years of teaching experience. They want teachers who are self-starters, team players, can work under difficult circumstances and are able to work peacefully with all people. Bishop Gatteck and all of us at AFRECS are excited about expanding this mission to teach and feed more children, most of whom are orphans or unaccompanied minors because of the violence in the country.
Bishop Gatteck continues to request prayers for the school and its staff and students as the new school year opens. Please continue to hold them in your hearts and prayers.
News and Notes
Athing Mu wins 2 Gold Medals
By Dane Smith, AFRECS Executive Director
One of the great stories of the recently concluded Olympics in Japan is the success of Athing Mu. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, of South Sudanese parents who fled the dictatorship of Omar al-Bashir in the late 1990’s, Athing won two gold medals. She ran away with the women’s 800-meter race, leading all the way. She also anchored the American women’s victory in the 4 x 400-meter relay. Although publicity on the relay focused on Alyson Felix’s 11th medal over five Olympics, Athing actually ran the fastest leg and stood out for her dazzling smile. The Wall Street Journal’s Rachel Bachman wrote that Athing at 19 may already be the best American female runner. She is a rising sophomore at Texas A&M.
Human Rights Lawyers, Victims Call for ICC Inquiry on South Sudan
By Ken Scott adapted by Rich Jones, AFRECS Board Member
A prosecutor of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia filed on August 2 a detailed submission with the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, seeking, on behalf of thirty-one South Sudanese victim-survivors and others, an extensive ICC inquiry into atrocities, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in, and concerning, South Sudan and the tragic conflict that commenced in December 2013.
Kenneth R. Scott, a former U.S. Assistant District Attorney in Denver, Colorado, was joined in his submission by Guernica 37, a law group providing pro bono technical services in London, Madrid, and San Francisco. “There is a legal and evidential basis for opening a preliminary examination in relation to the situation in South Sudan,” Guernica 37’s Toby Cadman said. “In a conflict which has lasted more than six years and has seen more than a million and a half civilians take refuge across international borders and more than two million internally displaced, there is a demand that victims see justice.”
The confidential submission is supported by thirty-one victim-survivors, all South Sudanese women, almost all of whom were raped or sexually assaulted in connection with their displacement, all of whom have provided their heart-wrenching stories. Many men were killed or disappeared, as entire families and communities were displaced and homes destroyed, generally along ethnic or tribal lines. “Witnesses are more than willing to tell their stories”, Scott said. “They just have to be asked.”
The detailed 108-page submission asks the ICC Prosecutor to examine the massive deportation of more than one million South Sudanese into northern Uganda as a crime against humanity, as well as the war crime of ordering the displacement of a civilian population, and other related and connected crimes, including widespread killing and sexual violence.
An essential basis for the ICC’s engagement concerning South Sudan is the ICC’s jurisdictional decisions on human rights violations and crimes concerning Myanmar, which, like South Sudan, is not an ICC State-Party. The ICC determined that it has jurisdiction over Myanmar-related crimes where some part of the crimes (including, for some crimes, their consequences, or effects) were committed, occurred, or completed on the territory of an ICC State-Party — in that case, Bangladesh. Based on deportation and persecution as crimes against humanity — at least some parts of which were committed, continued or completed in Bangladesh — the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber III authorized the ICC Prosecutor to open a full investigation concerning Myanmar crimes which, once authorized, was, and is, not limited to the crimes examined in the preliminary investigation.
“A dramatically similar jurisdictional analysis applies to South Sudan and Uganda,” said Scott. “Crimes against humanity and horrible war crimes have been committed, and excuse after excuse, delay after delay, impunity after impunity cannot be tolerated.”
The Feast of Marc Nikkel
by Rich Jones, AFRECS Board Member
The Rev. Dr. Marc Nikkel and Akurdit
Photo by Nancy M. Frank, first AFRECS Executive Director
The Rev. Dr. Marc R. Nikkel (1950-2000), a native of Reedley, California, was a missionary of The Episcopal Church and the Church Mission Society of the U.K. who dedicated his life and ministry to the people of Sudan. He is remembered there as an evangelist and teacher who was instrumental in the rapid spread of Christian faith during the 1980’s and 1990’s and as a peacemaker among the more than sixty ethnic groups in what is today South Sudan. A school was established in his memory in Bor Diocese.
Among the many dioceses and parishes in the United States touched by the preaching and writing of Marc Nikkel, Grace Episcopal Church (the former R. E. Lee Memorial Church) in the college town of Lexington, Virginia, for the past twenty years has celebrated this lesser, latter-day saint annually on the Sunday closest to his death – this year it will be September 5. The preacher will be Peter Alier, a lay leader of the Sudanese congregation meeting at St. James Episcopal Church in Roanoke, Virginia. Richard J. Jones, retired professor of mission at Virginia Theological Seminary, will speak on “Being Christian in the Two Sudans Today.” As a resource to anyone interested in learning more, or in celebrating this missionary life in your own community, AFRECS offers these liturgical materials and background reading.
The Collect and Readings for the Feast of Mark Nikkel
Lord God, giver of all gifts, we bless your name for the gifts of missionary zeal, courage in the face of adversity and suffering, and scholarly achievement on behalf of the Episcopal Church of Sudan given through Marc Nikkel, missionary priest. We pray that your Holy Spirit may continue to provide, through your Church, people with strength in adversity, articulate faith in the midst of suffering, and dedication to the ministry of peace and reconciliation. We ask this for your glory and the strengthening of your Church, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
The First Lesson—Lamentations 3:22-26 (The Lord is good to those who wait for him)
Psalm 96 (Sing to the LORD a new song)
The Second Lesson—Philippians 4:4-9 (The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding)
The Gospel—Matthew 5:1-16 (Blessed are the peacemakers)
Sudan Reading List and Resources
1. Marc Nikkel, Why Haven’t You Left? Letters from the Sudan Edited by Grant LeMarquand. 2006, Church Publishing. Candid, personal, and descriptive record of a learner and a teacher in a time of war.
2. Andrew S. Natsios, Sudan, South Sudan, & Darfur: What Everyone Needs to Know; 2012, Oxford University Press, 256 pages. Natsios served as USAID Administrator 2001-2005 and US Special Envoy for Sudan 2006-7.
3.. Edward Eremugo Kenyi, Sacrifice and other Short Stories; 2020, Africa World Books, 133 pages. Kenyi is a public health physician and poet, currently working at Johns Hopkins University; stories are set mostly in South Sudan and Khartoum, with one in Washington, DC and one in outer space.
4. Zack Vertin, A Rope from the Sky: The Making and Unmaking of the World’s Newest State; 2019, Pegasus Books, 497 pages. Vivid descriptions of Sudanese leaders and villagers woven into a coherent chronology of US diplomatic work between 2005 and 2016, as witnessed by a notetaker for the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan.
5. Francis M. Deng, War of Visions: Conflict of Identities in the Sudan; 1995, Brookings Institution, 577 pages. Sociological and historical analysis of ethnic and political background of conflict, 1860-1992, including detail on the Ngok Dinka.
A Prayer for Sudan and South Sudan https://afrecs.org/pray/
Holy Women, Holy Men: May 16: The Martyrs of the Sudan
https://
Contact: mathewsonl@stpaulcathedral.org
Friends on Other Islands
by Rich Jones, AFRECS Board Member
American friends of the Episcopal Church of the Sudans appreciate being reminded we are part of an international network. Our Executive Director recently received a note from Jenny Smyth in Belfast, where she is mission director of Church Mission Society Ireland. She wrote,
“I just wanted to thank you for the very informative and carefully curated E-blast updates. These are very helpful for us here in Church Mission Society Ireland giving a wider perspective on the geopolitical situation as it unfolds. We keep in close contact with the specific ECSS partners we work with (dioceses of Kajo Keji, Yei, Maridi, Olo, Ibba) and value the contribution AFRECS makes in both practical support and information sharing. “
Prompted by this kind message to look at CMSI’s bulletin from April 2021 edited by Linda Abwa (South Sudan Update APR21 (filesusr.com) , we found news of leaders we knew and calamities and blessings in South Sudan we had no inkling of.
We are grateful for the labor of Archdeacon A. Paul Fehley over the past year and a half in Toronto, Canada. Paul skillfully used his position as Interim Africa Partnership Officer for The Episcopal Church to convene three useful teleconferences. Americans benefitted from hearing the voices of Canon Ian Woodward of the Diocese of Salisbury in the Church of England, Bishop Anthony Poggo at Lambeth Palace in London, Dr. Joseph Z. Bilal in Juba, and Nagulan Nisia, Africa staff member for Episcopal Relief and Development.
The oldest foreign friends of the ECS and ECSS are undoubtedly the Church Mission Society in the U.K., active in Sudan from 1899 onward, and the Church Association for Sudan and South Sudan. (The latter began with a core of concerned former colonial administrators and missionaries from the era before Sudanese independence in 1956.) The Association’s excellent website is www.casss.org.uk. Their Co-Chair is the Rev. Pauline Walker, a longtime encourager of theological education in the Sudans.
AFRECS lacks contact with CMS in Australia, where many expatriated Sudanese have settled, and which is a significant supporter of the church in the Sudans. (Help wanted!)
The Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul, of course, had already told us: “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the harvest.”
Other News from Various Sources
From Sudan Tribune August 10, 2021
US Urges SS leaders to protect fundamental rights
August 10, 2021 (JUBA)- The United States on Tuesday said it supported South Sudan’s independence in order for the landlocked East African nation to become a fully united, peaceful, just, and prosperous society based on respect for human rights and the rule of law. In a statement released by the Embassy in Juba (https://ss.usembassy.gov/
https://www.sudantribune.com/
From Radio Tamazuj
Sudan to hand Bashir, other officials to ICC
Sudan says it will surrender former officials, including former deposed president Omar al-Bashir, wanted for alleged war crimes in the Darfur region to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mariam al-Mahdi, Sudan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, was quoted as saying “The Council of Ministers decided to hand over those wanted by the ICC and approved a bill on Sudan’s accession to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the two matters will be presented in a joint meeting of the Sovereignty Council and the Council of Ministers for ratification,”
According to the official SUNA agency, the minister made the remarks on Tuesday during a consultative meeting between the foreign ministry and the new chief prosecutor of the Hague-based court, Karim Khan, who was visiting Khartoum.
Al-Bashir ruled Sudan for 30 years. The military overthrew Al-Bashir in April 2019 amid nationwide protests, and he faces charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity over the conflict that broke out in Darfur in 2003.
https://radiotamazuj.org/en/
As our friends in the Sudans struggle to build peace in their nations, we give thanks for your continued support in prayer and generosity
We are deeply that grateful that contributions from you, our supporters, continue to nurture AFRECS in expanding our impact. You make a difference in the essential peacebuilding work of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan, so needed in these challenging times. We hope you will consider taking a moment to consider a gift for our work with the people of the Sudans and to offer a prayer for their nations. You can contribute online at https://afrecs.org or send a check made out to AFRECS to P.O. Box 3327, Alexandria, VA 22302
This issue of the AFRECS E-Blast was compiled by Board members Caroline Klam and Richard Jones.
AFRECS Editors encourage readers to submit their news for publication; the next deadline is August 17, 2021, please submit your news to Caroline Klam at klamcd21@gmail.com.