On July 8, Sudanese authorities destroyed the church complex in Khartoum North, sources said. Without prior warning, the bulldozers and trucks had arrived at the Pentecostal church complex in the Elhaji Yussif area of the East Nile district at noon and began destroying the church building, sources told local media.
Authorities initially gave no reason to destroy the building. This includes places of worship and administrative offices, sources said.
“It was shocking,” witnesses reported.
According to Christian Solidarity around the World (CSW), churches belonging to the Denomination of the Pentecostal Church (SPC) of Sudan built the building in the early 1990s. Christians called on the ecumenical group Sudan Church Council to be aware of violations of religious freedom.
Authorities reportedly did not seek a paper owning the church building before destroying it.
Authorities later told church officials that the building was destroyed as part of a drive to remove “unregulated” buildings across Khartoum, according to the Christian Support Group’s Open Door.
“Last month, church leader and chairman of Sudan’s Evangelical Community Council, Rafat Sameer warned that the future of Sudan’s churches remains unstable under the de facto government of the SAF,” Open Doors reported. “They target all churches in areas outside major cities and destroy them with direct attacks,” he said after last week’s incident.
Church leaders condemned the destruction and described it as part of an increase in persecution of Christians in Sudan.
“We urge all Christians to pray that this will strengthen us in this persecution and pray for the Church in Sudan,” the local pastor Juma Sapana said on his Facebook page.
The demolition comes after the Sudanese Army (SAF) declared in May that it had freed Hartzm from the Paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that have been trapped in combat since April 15, 2023. Since then, both SAF and RSF have been attacking places of worship.
Sudan was the most difficult to become a Christian on the Open Doors 2025 World Observation List (WWL), ranking fifth in 50 countries, falling from the eighth of the previous year.
The situation in Sudan worsened as the civil war that broke out in April 2023 intensified. WWL reports that Sudan was murdered and the number of Christians who were sexually assaulted and sexually assaulted by Christian homes and businesses.
“Christians from all backgrounds can’t escape and are trapped in chaos. The churches are bombarded, looted and occupied by fighting political parties,” the report states.
Both the RSF and the SAF are Muslim troops that attacked Christians who were evacuated with accusations of supporting other combatants.
According to the UN Commissioner of Human Rights (UNCHR), the conflict with the SAF, which shared military control in Sudan after the October 2021 coup, terrified civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing thousands and expelling more than 11.9 million people across Sudan’s borders.
SAF General Abdelfattah Al-Burhan and his then-President, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, agreed to the framework in March 2023 to reestablish the democratic transition next month, but were in power when discrepancies with the military structure encouraged final recognition.
Burhan attempted to deploy the RSF, a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militia, which helped former army al-Bashir under normal military control in the hands of the rebels, but within 10 years Dagoro accepted the merger.
Both military leaders have an Islamist background while trying to portray themselves in the international community as a democratic advocate for religious freedom.
Sudan was the first to drop out of the top 10 on the WWL list in six years, ranking 13th in 2021.
Following two years of progress in religious freedom in Sudan after the Muslim dictatorship ended under Bashir in 2019, the state-sponsored ghost of persecution in the 25th October 2021 military coup, the interim civilian judicial government excluded the interim civilian government after Bashir was forced out of power for 30 years in April 2019. It effectively retracted the law of apostasy that prohibited the labeling of “pagans” in religious groups and therefore made Islam punish for death.
During the October 25th, 2021 coup, Sudanese Christians feared returning the most oppressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.
In 2019, the US State Department removed Sudan from its list of specific countries of concern (CPCs) engaged or tolerated “systematic, continuous and awful violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watchlist. Sudan was previously designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its special watch list.
Sudan’s Christian population is estimated to be 4.5% of the total population of 2 million, or more than 43 million.
