by Roy Nielsen

A couple of years ago I accidentally came across iAbolish.com, the website for the American Anti-Slavery Group. Reading about the 27-million slaves throughout the world took my breath away. I called the Boston-based AASG and asked if I could volunteer. Charles Jacobs, the Group’s founder and president, told me about Sudan and the two million Episcopalians facing genocide and said, "If you could get the Episcopal Church more involved in helping the Sudanese, that would be significant."

The Episcopal Church in southern Sudan is said to be the fastest growing church in the Anglican Communion. These Episcopalians, along with non-Muslim blacks in the south, are victims of the Khartoum government’s proclaimed jihad against non-Muslims. (See p. 23 for more on Muslim-Christian conflict in Sudan and elsewhere.) Sudan has become the greatest case of religious persecution and ethnic cleansing since the Holocaust. Like the Holocaust, the indifference of the international community has made this genocide possible.

The magnitude of the atrocities in Sudan is astonishing. Their 20 years of violence is the longest uninterrupted civil war in the world. The viciousness of the National Islamic Front government in Khartoum rivals the most oppressive regimes in history. Along with the war’s two million dead, more than four million have been displaced and the Sudanese have become the most uprooted people on earth.

The Khartoum government uses slaves as payment to their mercenaries. The U.S. government and scores of the most credible international observers have documented this. The government’s militias march through towns slaughtering the men and dragging the women and children off to be gang-raped and enslaved. Sudan is the only place in the world where the government routinely bombs civilian targets: hospitals, relief centers, market places and churches. The result is a situation U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell calls the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world. No other government has been accused of genocide by so many knowledgeable observers. For two decades, the world has turned a blind eye.

The U.S. Episcopal Church is involved in aiding Sudanese refugees and lobbying the federal government to provide diplomatic pressure to achieve a just peace. The 2000 General Convention, meeting in Denver, Colo., passed Resolution A130 "Human Rights: Solidarity with Persecuted Christians in Sudan." One line of that resolution states that "Episcopalians are encouraged to give generously to enable the people of Sudan to rebuild their lives." My diocese of Massachusetts and other dioceses have passed similar resolutions. More recently, the Episcopal Church divested its holdings in Talisman Oil and Fidelity Investments (two companies with business ties to the cruel Taliban-like regime) and last fall pushed for passage of the Sudan Peace Act.

Nevertheless, in truth, we Episcopalians have been shamefully indifferent to the fate of Sudanese Christians. As long as 10 years ago, the church leaders of Sudan began asking the Episcopal Church in the U.S. for help, particularly with food and medicine. In 1998, Margaret Larom visited Sudan on behalf on the U.S. Episcopal Church’s Anglican and Global Relations office. Upon her return Larom said, "They say we are all one family but they don’t understand why we are not there for them. ... They are saying, in effect, ‘We are keeping the faith alive here – where are you?’"

Leaving it up to the national church to aid millions of our brothers and sisters in the Sudan is not enough. Individual Episcopal dioceses must get involved. Episcopalians must make sure Resolution A130 and similar diocesan resolutions are more than just ink on paper. In Massachusetts, the diocese’s Committee on Peace and Justice is now in the process of developing a campaign to increase awareness about the crisis. In addition, we hope to bring food and medicine to Sudan in the near future.

Start something in your congregation or diocese. You can find out more about the crisis in Sudan by visiting the AASG website iAbolish.com. Journalist Maria Sliwa also has a website devoted to Sudan, FreeWorldNow.com. Contact Professor Eric Reeves (ereeves@email. smith.edu) and ask to be placed on his mailing list. Margaret Larom at the Episcopal Church Center will provide information about what the Episcopal Church USA is doing to aid Sudan: mlarom@episcopalchurch.org. I speak at church and community groups throughout New England and will also provide information and updates on the progress of the Massachusetts diocese as we move forward, wr.nielsen@worldnet.att.

Looking back at the perverse hatred that inspired the Nazis, we are still aghast. When a true genocide is being committed, we can see in the violence the kind of hatred that drives a multitude of crimes against humanity. It is there in Sudan. Someday we will look back on this genocide and ask the familiar question: "How could this happen?"