IRD Urges President Not to Follow Obama Administration on Sudan

Source: Institute on Religion and Democracy Media

Washington, D.C. - October 24, 2017 (The Ponder News) -- Sudanese Americans are set to gather Wednesday in Washington, D.C. in order to urge the Trump Administration not to permanently lift sanctions on Sudan’s government. Sanctions were temporarily lifted by President Barack Obama days before he left office.

The Institute on Religion & Democracy Church Alliance for a New Sudan is a co-sponsor of the demonstration to support the continuation of sanctions and call attention to the Government of Sudan’s ongoing atrocities against indigenous peoples.

In an open letter to President Trump from “American citizens, genocide survivors, and human rights activists” the Sudanese Human Rights Advocacy Group asks for sanctions to remain and for additional sanctions to be imposed on Sudanese officials. Activists from Sudan argue that the Khartoum government has consistently worked to undermine U.S. national security by supporting terrorism, committing genocide, persecuting Christians and political dissidents, demolishing churches, imprisoning priests, destabilizing neighboring countries, and preventing access to humanitarian relief for internally displaced people.

The letter outlines Sudanese regime atrocities from the time of now-President Omar Al-Bashir’s recruitment by Islamists in 1989 to seize power. The writers remind President Trump that “U.S. sanctions were mainly imposed to curb the actions of the Sudanese regime and prevent it from continuing its genocide.”

IRD Religious Liberty Program Director Faith J.H. McDonnell commented:

“The Islamic Republic of Sudan is waging genocidal war against the black, African marginalized people groups in Darfur, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile State, and in the Nubian areas of North Sudan.

“The Khartoum regime is, and has been for decades, a key player in global jihad and the violent spread of Islamic imperialism. The Obama policy has been one that has cast the regime persecutors as morally equivalent with the persecuted and their defenders.

“Although the sanctions have not prevented Khartoum’s prosecution of genocide, to lift them would increase the atrocities and the speed of the Government of Sudan’s Final Solution against marginalized peoples.”