UK is deporting people to Twilight Zone of Khartoum

bulldozed church

There is an unwritten rule that politicians and journalists should avoid comparisons with either the Holocaust or apartheid. However, the daily prejudice suffered by black African Christians living in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, comes close to being apartheid in all but name.

Denied schooling, employment or health care, many use chemicals to try to lighten their skin colour. Their churches are bulldozed, while the churches of Christians who are non-black Africans remain standing. They are harassed by the security services, repeatedly arrested and beaten, accused of belonging to rebel groups. They are exploited by employers, living marginal lives in dismal shanty towns and camps without basic services like water. Yet, the British government refuses to acknowledge that returning these refugees to Khartoum puts them in jeopardy.

Between one and two million black African Sudanese, many of whom are Christian, live in the slums and displaced peoples' camps that circle Khartoum. The numbers are imprecise for a reason: Sudanese officials usually refuse to register many black African Sudanese citizens for identity cards because they claim their tribal affiliation is not on the approved list of ethnic groups. Without a tribal affiliation, you cannot get an identity number. And without an identity number you are a non-person. There is no access to education, health care, essential state services or formal employment.

At Waging Peace, we help Sudanese dissidents and refugees who have reached the UK after hair-raising escapes from Sudan. They tell us remarkably similar stories: they initially go to Khartoum because their home in the Nuba Mountains or Blue Nile state has been systematically bombed by the Islamist Sudanese regime. Many of them flee as the bombs drop on their villages, leaving them only moments to grab a few possessions and to run for safety in a cave or a fox hole. Their homes have been destroyed, and with them their means of proving their identity.

Yet, when they arrive in the relative safety of Khartoum most are denied schooling or medical attention or employment without an identity number. Officials routinely refuse to issue these vital documents to black Africans, claiming the name of their tribe is not recognised. They are told to go back to their place of birth, to find their clan elder who can attest to their ethnic roots, and to get an identity number there. This assumes their clan leader has survived the bombing, that a government office exists in a war zone, and that it is possible to come and go freely in a region that has been in the grip of war since 2011.

The result is that hundreds of thousands of citizens -all of them ethnically black African- exist in a twilight world, harassed by the security services who treat people from the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile as untrustworthy supporters of the militias locked in conflict with the Sudanese regime. They are also vulnerable to exploitation by employers or others who cheat them or demand bribes. They mostly live a hand-to-mouth existence in miserable camps or slums, selling tea at the side of the road.

When the more educated and qualified migrants apply for jobs, they are told, bluntly, that their skin is too black. The mother of one of our clients had worked for a company for years. When she applied for a promotion, she was told, "You deserve the position, and you're the best for the job, but you won't get it because you're a Nuban." A client told us his relatively light skin colour prompted potential employers to cross question him about his ethnicity. "When I admit I'm Nuban, while the other applicants are all Arab, it's made clear I won't get the job." In another case, when a migrant with light skin and a non-African-sounding name applied for an identity number, the official highlighted his ethnicity in red, so potential employers would not be tricked into thinking the man was of Arab ethnicity.

Even worshipping in peace is denied to them. The 2005 Sudan constitution guarantees freedom of belief. However, in 2010 President Bashir (who is wanted by the International Criminal Court on genocide changes in Darfur) declared, "We will change the constitution and at that time there will be no time to speak of diversity of culture or ethnicity. Sharia and Islam will be the main source for the constitution, Islam the official religion and Arabic the official language."

He has been true to his word. Each year dozens of churches in the Khartoum area are closed, confiscated or bulldozed. Some regime observers suggest the crack down is not a campaign against Christianity but due to venal officials and their business friends wanting valuable land. Others point out that Ethiopian and Coptic churches are left in peace: it is the churches of people from the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile that are threatened.

At Waging Peace we have recorded hundreds of terrifying testimonies from refugees. It is clear that so long as the Sudanese regime targets the ethnic homes of its black African civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile state, people will migrate to the capital, seeking safety. While Christian schools, hospitals and churches are systematically bombed, civilians will flee to Khartoum. But once there, they face a new form of prejudice, rooted in an intolerance reaching back to the Arab slavery trade.

According to Osama bin Laden, who was given sanctuary for five years by Sudan's President Bashir, "When an Arab sees a black, he sees a slave." It is hardly surprising therefore that ethnically black African Sudanese face such hostility in Khartoum, ranging from routinely being called abid (slave) and denied work to being intimidated and beaten by the security services.

Despite this, the UK is keen to deport migrants whose ethnic origins are in the Nuba Mountains or Blue Nile State. The Home Office reasons that being sent to Khartoum, as opposed to the war zones, does not place the would-be migrant in danger as it is legally construed.

A more desirable path would be for the British government to work with its allies to apply sustained and serious diplomatic pressure on Khartoum to stop killing unarmed civilians in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile. The UK could start by holding Sudanese officials to their multiple promises to abide by the international human rights treaties and conventions they have signed. If they are in breach, then with our allies we should freeze their financial assets.

Instead, unfortunately, the UK and the EU are fostering an ever-closer relationship with the corrupt Khartoum regime in the hope that Sudan will stop Africans migrating across its territory on the way to Europe. Paradoxically, the more the West turns a blind eye to conditions in Sudan, the more unpleasant life is for its people, and the more likely they are to risk their lives to escape the Twilight Zone in the Nile.

For more information, visit: www.WagingPeace.info. Rebecca Tinsley's novel about Sudan, 'When the Stars Fall to Earth' is available from Amazon.