Life seemed to be improving for a Sudanese refugee who fled Sudan to Ethiopia and South Sudan, put his faith in Christ, and found work at his uncle’s company in Uganda.
Essam Juma Abdelkreem attended his first Sunday service twice in an Ethiopian refugee camp in 2024 after fleeing war-torn Khartoum. Abdelkreem, who trekked to South Sudan that year, then put his faith in Christ in January. According to the evangelist, he participated in discipleship training for six months and was baptized on June 18th.
After moving to a refugee camp in Bwayeru in northern Uganda, he contacted his Muslim uncle and asked him to help him run a shop in Kampala.
“The business was doing very well and I was able to make a living,” Abdelkreem told Morning Star News.
The 27-year-old former student majoring in animal production at Sudan University of Science and Technology was unaware that his uncle’s wife was monitoring his movements. First, she noticed that he had stopped reciting the five daily Islamic prayers. She then pointed out that he no longer read the Koran or attended mosque prayers.
Abdelkreem said they secretly searched his bag and found a copy of his Bible and discipleship certificate.
“She immediately reported it to my uncle. When my uncle heard the report, he became emotionally upset and ordered me to leave the store and the house immediately,” Abdelkreem told Morning Star News on October 25.
He has since returned to South Sudan and is reportedly staying with Christians.
“I don’t want to rely on my friends because my life has become difficult,” he said.
destroyed church
Christians in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea coast, were upset on Wednesday (26 November) after they spotted Muslims writing slogans on the walls of a church, officials said.
Video from a CCTV camera recording the vandalism in real time at 15:12 pm on November 26 shows a person emerging from a painted car near the gates of the Sudanese Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Port Sudan and writing in Arabic on the wall: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is His Prophet.”
The video also shows him writing another slogan in red paint in Arabic, sparking outrage among Sudanese church leaders on social media. Philip Abdelmassi SPEC said this action is an act of terrorism that not only destroys Sudan’s social fabric but also poses a real threat to the Christian presence in Port Sudan and other parts of the country.
“This is a deliberate act by Islamists and may be the beginning of Boko Haram-like actions in Sudan,” Abdelmassif wrote in a WhatsApp group.
Pastor Yusif Mattar Kodi of SPEC called on Christians not to remain silent in the face of this act, calling it an attack on church and country. He warned security agencies, religious leaders and all citizens to be vigilant.
Another evangelical leader in Port Sudan also acknowledged the vandalism.
“A Coptic Orthodox church was targeted as well. We have reported the incident to the authorities and hope that the culprits caught on surveillance cameras will be arrested,” said the pastor, whose identity is being withheld for security reasons.
According to the Joshua Project, Sudan is 93% Muslim, with 4.3% of the population practicing traditional ethnic religions and 2.3% Christians.
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.
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.
