ARTICLES

I Would Like to Thank the United States

Sudanese at Blessed Sacrament

By Allyson Smith

Enrolled full-time at Grossmont and City Colleges, 24-year-old Martin Lomatayo will transfer next year to UCSD as an economics major. On weekends, he attends Mass at Blessed Sacrament parish or ecumenical worship services at a Presbyterian church.

Unlike other out-of-state students, Lomatayo did not come here of his own free will. Six years ago, he was forced to leave his homeland, the Sudan.

The largest country by area in Africa, the Sudan has been wracked by war between the Islamic military regime in the north and Christian and animist resisters in the south. Since 1983, nearly 2.5 million Sudanese Christians -- over 70 percent of them Catholic -- have been annihilated by Muslims; millions of others have been displaced.

"I am a political asylee," explained Lomatayo. "I was basically a conscientious objector because when I graduated from high school, the government instituted a policy of national service whereby high school grads would be sent to the south to fight. I think that is wrong because I would be fighting my own brothers in the south, and that's the reason that forced me out of the country.

"I was subjected to severe emotional distress because of the activities that I used to do in high school. I was not in jail, but I have a lot of friends who were in jail. I saw my classmates and friends go into the military and go into war zones. Some never made it back. I had to be hiding always. I could not take a ride in the bus, because they would get me."

Like Lomatayo, Santo Deng, 31, attends Mass at Blessed Sacrament. "I was sent to India for studies by my parents, and due to the escalation of the civil war, the situation became worse such that I could not make it back to Sudan. I applied for refugee status with the UNCR (United Nations Commission on Refugees) in India. It was a long process but finally I was granted refugee status. When a refugee resettlement program for the United States opened, I applied and was deemed an entrant, and I was resettled here in San Diego in 1999.

"Christians are being deprived of political rights, rights of development in the south, and the right to express their own beliefs. People have to move for safety. They have to go a long way to the north where we have more than three million people, and some people ran for safety in Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania.

"Christianity is not tolerated. Churches are being burned down. There is forceful Islamization. They are withholding food as a means to convert people to Islam."

As a caseworker for Catholic Charities' refugee program, Santo interacts with both Christians and Muslims. "I do have caseloads with Muslims and other faith groups, but not as a denomination worshipping our Lord in Arabic."

The second Sunday of each month, Blessed Sacrament celebrates an African Mass. "The idea of the African Mass is to bring the African Catholics together, because the Catholic Church realized there is no connection between Catholic African immigrants and refugees and the Catholic Church in America," explained Lomatayo. "Some were resettled here. Some are here for other reasons, but the majority of the Catholic Sudanese are war refugees, political asylees."

Once a month, Martin and Santo join other Sudanese Christians for Unity Day at the Sudanese-American Presbyterian Church at 5202 Orange Avenue in City Heights. Dedicated last year, the single-story cinderblock church pastored by Peter Lual was filled nearly to capacity October 5 as approximately 100 Christians -- half of them children -- worshipped.

Praying in the Nuer dialect and singing "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" to bongo drums, the neatly groomed assembly, some dressed in native costume, welcomed guest speakers Maurice Mussad and George Saieg, head of Orange County-based Arabic Christian Perspective. The two brothers-in-law spoke of the need for African Christians to stand together against the threat of Islam, to view themselves as missionaries within the United States, and to be ready to die for Jesus Christ.

Mussad told those gathered, "We fled from the persecution in Sudan to come here, so we have to be a missionary here. Not, 'I am ready to die in Sudan,' but 'I am ready to die here.'"

Mussad and Saieg conduct Christian outreaches at Islamic mosques. "We've been visiting for the last two years mosques throughout Southern California, over 69 Islamic centers, to win Muslims for Jesus Christ," Sudanese-born Saieg told me. "The big problem for us is the leaders of the mosques. Most of the time they are Pakistanis or Saudi Arabians. That's why they don't like us, especially because I know Arabic, the original language of the Koran. I know the truth about Islam. One of the Muslim's duties is to kill the Christian and the Jew. The English translation of the Koran is not accurate; they substitute the word 'fight' when it really says 'kill.' We need to love the Muslims because Jesus loved them and died for them. We need to set them free from the evil of Islam," he added.

Saieg estimates there are 227 Islamic centers in Southern California and over 100,000 Muslims in Orange County alone. He lamented that Christianity is seen as a "white religion" while Islam is seen as a "black religion" and that many Arfrican-Americans are converting to Islam. Saieg stressed the need for physical and psychological help for displaced Sudanese and more Arabic Christian churches to serve Muslims who convert to Christianity. He said that Catholics would be especially successful as missionaries to the Sudan because many southern Sudanese speak English fluently.

Among those attending the Unity Day service was 44-year-old Anna Jok, a Presbyterian from the Upper Nile region of southern Sudan. "I come from Sudan to Egypt, and now I have five years in San Diego. I am a widow woman. I have six kids. My husband was a commissioner in Sudan. He died in 1991. He was 47. They say he die of heart attack, but actually it was like a poison, because my husband worked with the government. The Islamic people give the people who work with them in the government poison. They say it was a heart attack, but three people now I know die like that. All of the people who work with the government, they die like that, if they are Christians."

Anna works three days a week as a caregiver; three other days, she attends school. Because she does not speak English well, she says, "There's no good job here. I pay the rent, like $920 (a month). My daughter help me. The one is 26; one is 24 but she's not here. Two are in college; they don't work. I [am] suffering a lot. I have my mom and my sister here. They are suffering also here."

Jok is thankful for the Sudan Peace Act law signed by President Bush in October 2002 that could lead to economic sanctions on Sudan's government if it fails to negotiate in faith to end the civil war but fears that Muslims will not abide by it. "We know they have a peace now from (between) south and north but we don't want it to be like before where they are fighting again and again and they will come back to kill the Christian."

When asked how Americans can help the Sudanese, Anna said, "We need to have the development. We don't have good hospital, we don't have good day school." She added, "A lot of people now are single moms whose husbands died in the war. A lot of kids now are lost. So we need peace, and we need the American to follow the peace to help us."

Bol Biong Bol, 31 and single, has lived in San Diego for almost three years. "The reason they let me go out of Sudan is the religious persecution. I used to work as a global mission volunteer with the Seventh-Day Adventist church in western Sudan. We had some Muslim converts and it was very awkward. It wasn't acceptable in the eyes of the government. I went to jail for 17 days. I was tortured. They used electric pulse, they beat me up almost every day, take me out to a desert outside of the town and said, 'I can shoot you and kill you.' I said, 'It doesn't matter, I can die, but I didn't do anything wrong.'

"After that, they released me under certain conditions. Based on those conditions, I had to leave the country. The conditions were either to close down the church within 21 days, report every day to the security office in Nyala Town in western Sudan, and the condition of closing down the church. I didn't accept that. They said I had to get an approval from the minister of consulate, because the law of 1964 says that you can't establish a church whatsoever the case might be unless you go back to the minister of consulate. I told them that I can't ask permission from nobody to start a church. So that is what I had to do."

Bol has some contacts with Muslims in San Diego. "Some of [the Muslims] I know are from my country. One guy has proved what is going on in Sudan. He said what is going on in Sudan is not fair, and he's not happy about it."

Bol offers San Diegans this suggestion to help those in the Sudan: "They can write to their senators and to President Bush. People have been putting their attention in different places, but in Sudan it has been two million lives that have been lost."

Bol said, "I would like to thank the United States for opening the door for us to be here, and to enjoy the equal opportunity of work in front of the law. I would like to appreciate very much the efforts of President Bush right now in trying to bring peace into reality in the Sudan by sending Senator John Danforth to be the United States envoy for the Sudan peace talks, and for supporting the people who have been suffering all of these years."

Presbyterian John Kang, 43 and married with nine children, came to San Diego in 1995 via Texas. "At age 11, I was forced to become Muslim and taught the Koran. Everything changed to Arabic. All children were forced, and if you refused, they hit you with a stick and isolate you even if you are a child. I was isolated for three months. Other kids totally disappeared.

"The Muslims changed Sunday services to Monday so that people who work could not attend them. They canceled all religious classes in schools, and those who taught religion were all fired. Church buildings were burned down or changed into government offices. At night, the military would patrol towns and control any person who claims to be Christian."

Lam Thot Muang, 34, is a San Diego representative of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. Married with six children, he works as an administrative assistant for Community Health Group.

"I left Sudan because of war between north and south. The problem was when the Muslims in the north tried to convert the Christians in the south. At that time, I was a student, in 1993, and our town, Nasir Town, was shelled by rebel forces. Two of my colleagues were shot in front of me. I jumped over their bodies to flee, wearing only my underwear.

"I walked three days to the Ethiopian border," continued Muang. "In Ethiopia, I stayed in a refugee camp for nine years before getting out in 1992. Then I went to Ifo Refugee Camp in Kenya where I there started the process to resettle in the United States. My family lived in another town, and I didn't see them until two years later. I did not know what had happened to them during those two years."

Jacob Gatkuoth, a 40-year-old father of nine children, works as a security officer since resettling in San Diego five years ago, but in the Sudan he was a soldier for Christian rebel forces.

"The concern about jihad is true," Gatkuoth told me. "The Muslims' objective is to kill the southerners and force the Christians to convert to Islam. I participated in ongoing fighting myself and was wounded in military action against the Islamic fundamentalist government; therefore, I have a military rank of captain.

"I came here because the movement in the south divided itself. I was about to be killed, but I ran to Uganda with all of my military equipment, and they took me to the UNCR. The UNCR interviewed us to see if we wanted to go back to Sudan or go into a resettlement program. I chose resettlement. I did not want to go back to Sudan because I didn't want to kill my brother. I said to myself, 'I will rejoin them when they are reunited.'

"Before I came to the United States," said Gatkuoth, "I formed an organization named South Sudan Christian Youth to say, 'We are Christian and we will die for it.' Now, I am not thinking of going back to fight but as a missionary to bring them the Word of God."

For more information, call Blessed Sacrament Parish at (619) 582-5722, the Sudanese-American Presbyterian Church at (619) 582-6401, or George Saieg at (714) 533-6659.

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