Stripped of Citizenship: South Sudan

Do you have a great-grandparent who was born outside of your country of residence? Can you prove exactly where your great-grandparents were born? If you were living in North Sudan today but you had even one great-grandparent born in South Sudan, that would be enough to get you kicked out of the country. Right now, President Omar Al-Bashir is using his Islamic government in Khartoum to strip thousands of people of their citizenship...against their will. 

On April 8, 2012, North Sudan declared anyone of southern origin ineligible for citizenship.

We knew this was coming. Back in January 2011, when South Sudan held a referendum on whether or not to split from the North, President Al-Bashir started calling people with southern origin “foreign.” In September, he began to fire southern government employees and to close southern newspapers. In December, his government fined and imprisoned a man and his sister for trying to "illegally" get Sudanese nationality cards...illegal because although their father was Sudanese, their mother was from South Sudan. According to Human Rights Watch, President Al-Bashir began publically promising that North Sudan’s new constitution would punish non-Muslims and fight against diversity (ethnic minorities and Christians). 

Compass Direct News reports that media outlets in North Sudan have been slandering Christian southern Sudanese. One newspaper, the Al Intibaha, described them as “cancer cells in the body of Sudan, the land of the Arab and Islam,” and requested the government to deport them. 

Another paper, the Arabic daily Alsahafa, applauded Governor Ahmad Abbass of Sennar state in central Sudan because he vowed to deport southern Sudanese from his state “without regret.” If you walk down the streets of Khartoum, you will see banners calling on Muslims to harass and expel southern Sudanese (even though some of them are also Muslims). 

WORLD Magazine reports here that President Omar Al-Bashir is continually bombing refugees in South Sudan, further targeting those who have fled or been deported, many of whom are Christians.

Now is the time to pray and pray hard.