Last week, Sudan expelled more than 100 mostly Christian South Sudanese women from Khartoum for what critics said were religious and political reasons.
At least 61 of the deported women have been separated from their children, according to Radio Tamazzi, in what officials say is a blatant violation of human rights. Christians say the government dimly views South Sudanese as a threat to Islam and security, even though most of the deported women have lived in the country for decades.
Officials said authorities raided South Sudanese homes across Khartoum and imprisoned women without legal aid or due process. Orphaned children were also arrested and deported.
Deported women told South Sudan’s Arabic-language newspaper Al-Watan that authorities had refused to return their children, aged between three months and 12 years. Some of the women were arrested from their homes around 2 a.m., while others were arrested on the street on their way to the market.
“I came empty-handed, leaving my two children, ages 3 and 9, and no one is taking care of them,” one of the women reportedly said.
Another woman told Al-Watan that she was imprisoned in Omdurman and deported the next day, leaving behind nine children.
Renku County Commissioner Din Deng Roos told Radio Tamazzi that authorities transferred the women to a detention center and then deported them to the Jodha border area to enter South Sudan’s Upper Nile state.
One of the deported mothers, Triza Aliye, was reportedly told by police: “Your children are not our concern.”
Arie said police arrested her on the street and did not allow her to return home to her children.
Another deported woman, Saba Abbas, told Al-Watan that she was imprisoned for four days and beaten for asking for water or food.
“It was inhumane,” she said.
Solana Jeremiah, head of the Civil Society Network in South Sudan’s Upper Nile State, said the deportation was “unacceptable”, according to Radio Tamazzi. Critics said Sudan, as a member of the United Nations, has an obligation to uphold international law and the Geneva Conventions, including the fundamental principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning refugees to places where their lives are at risk.
“South Sudan, where these people have fled a brutal civil war, remains a dangerous place,” Jotab Otou commented on Radio Tamazzi’s website. “The recent deportation of South Sudanese refugees from Sudan constitutes a serious violation of international law and a grave crime, as it involves the forcible separation of children from their parents.”
Islamic extremists have recently used social media to incite people to send South Sudanese Christians, many of whom were born in Sudan, to South Sudan.
According to the Joshua Project, 56 percent of South Sudan’s population is Christian. 34.1 percent of the population practices their traditional religion, and 9.4 percent are Muslim.
According to the Joshua Project, Sudan is 93% Muslim, with 4.3% of the population practicing traditional ethnic religions and 2.3% Christians.
The action took place during the civil war that broke out in April 2023 between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
RSF and SAF are both Islamist groups that attack displaced Christians for supporting the other country’s fighters.
The conflict between RSF and SAF, which shared military rule in Sudan after the October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands of people and displacing more than 11.9 million people inside and outside Sudan’s borders, according to the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
SAF General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and then-vice president and RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo were in power when civilian parties agreed in March 2023 on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the following month, but disagreements over the structure of the military stalled final approval.
Mr. Burhan aimed to bring the RSF, a militia with roots in the Janjaweed militia that helped quell former strongman Bashir’s rebels, under regular military control within two years, while Mr. Dagoro intended to accept integration within 10 years.
Although both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds, they seek to present themselves to the international community as champions of religious freedom and democracy.
Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL) ranks Sudan fifth among the 50 most difficult countries to become a Christian, down from eighth the previous year. Sudan fell out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it was ranked 13th for the first time in 2021.
After two years of progress in religious freedom in Sudan since the fall of Bashir’s Islamic dictatorship in 2019, the military coup on October 25, 2021 brought back the specter of state-sponsored persecution. After Bashir was ousted from power after 30 years in April 2019, the Interim Civil-Military Government succeeded in revoking some Sharia (Islamic law) provisions. The law prohibited labeling any religious group as “infidel” and effectively repealed the apostasy law, which made leaving Islam punishable by death.
The October 25, 2021 coup left Christians in Sudan concerned that the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law would be reinstated.
In 2019, the U.S. State Department removed Sudan from its list of countries of particular concern (CPC) that commit or tolerate “systematic, persistent, and egregious violations of religious freedom,” and elevated it to its watch list. Sudan was designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its special watch list.
