The camp was buzzing with the news about the negotiations in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between representatives of the Sudanese government and the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement. It was the seventh round of talks with a series of postponements. Their concentration was the fighting in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, two southern states along the border with South Sudan. I read the newspaper with my interview about the massacre in one of those border regions.
One of the witnesses to the recent mass killing in a small village in Sudan, Reverend Clint Winwood, a prominent New York City minister, spoke to a reporter for the
Daily Telegraph
about the atrocities. He is currently on a fact-finding mission through the region, documenting instances of religious persecution and ethnic cleansing. Articulate and devout, the minister has called on the world to bring a halt to the genocide occurring in South Sudan and Darfur.
Colin Samet: How long have you been in the country?
Reverend Winwood: I've been here in Sudan for about three weeks.
Samet: Have you had any trouble with the Sudanese government?
Reverend Winwood: No more than usual. I was warned not to go into this area, because they said the government could not be responsible for my safety. I've seen my share of suffering and misery.
Samet: Do you hold the government responsible for the murders, rapes, and looting you've seen? Are they supplying the militias who are responsible for these unlawful acts?
Reverend Winwood: Back in twenty eleven, Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir told reporters that the government had decided that Sudan would have a strict Islamic identity. This year government officials were on hand to witness the demolition of a Christian church, saying they needed the land to build affordable housing. Also, they decreed that there would be a ban on future church construction. They said they had enough Christian churches in the country.
Samet: Do you believe them?
Reverend Winwood: No, I don't. There should be religious liberty.
Samet: Have you seen persecution in action?
Reverend Winwood: Yes, I have. Still, I only hope the country's opposing forces can come together and stop fighting. We need a lasting peace. The people in this country need a permanent peace and a halt to the violence.
Samet: How will they do that? Cease-fires and truces have been signed and later violated. There were peace talks in Addis Ababa, but nothing has come of it. In fact, some say the violence has escalated.
Reverend Winwood: Maybe the European Union and the United States need to really step in and negotiate the peace. I'm surprised that the Arab League or some reputable Arab organization has not brokered some sort of settlement.
Samet: How do you feel President Obama has done in terms of the Sudanese crisis?
Reverend Winwood: The president has his plate full, putting out fires all over the world. America is war weary. I'm also surprised that more African American churches are not involved in ending the Sudanese crisis. They seem to be more involved in this gospel of prosperity and profit than in African politics and the plight of Christians worldwide.
Samet: What did you see the other night, during the massacre in that small, remote village in Sudan?
Reverend Winwood: I saw an attack by one of the militias on a small village, where the soldiers went from house to house, searching for Christians and other people who aren't loyal to their cause. The men were rounded up and shot. The soldiers took some of the girls and women hostage. Who knows their fate? Someone said they will be sold or given to members of the militias as sex slaves.
Samet: Did you see instances of assault and rape?
Reverend Winwood: Yes, I did.
Samet: Could you and the others give any assistance?
Reverend Winwood: No, we could not. We were outnumbered and outgunned. It was one of the most terrible experiences in my life.
Samet: Switching gears, what are your duties at the refugee camp there? Are you rolling up your sleeves?
Reverend Winwood: I do what I can. My first responsibility is to serve God and to minister to the people. At the camp, I've visited the sick, ministered to the critically ill and wounded, and performed funerals. As a Christian pastor, I try to show myself as an example worthy of dignity and respect. I send a message to these poor, displaced souls that all men and women are the children of God. I practice a gospel of love and hope in some evil times. Sudan is ripe for salvation.
Samet: Some say the battle in Sudan, along with other parts of the Middle East and Africa, is economic, not Christian versus Islam. You touched on this earlier, but you didn't elaborate on it.
Reverend Winwood: I forget who, but someone once said, “One cannot minister to the soul and ignore either the health of the body or the effects and relations of the social environment.” That is the role of the Christian church. The church has to free Africans from the shackles of magic and myth.
Samet: How can the church achieve this goal when it is operating in a heated climate of violence, killings, and genocide?
Reverend Winwood: I agree. This is a tough nut to crack. Genocide is not about minor frustrations, annoyances, and petty slights. Some of these conflicts have been going on for generations and generations. Some of them are tribal, and some of them are religious. Some of these wars and struggles are the aftermath of colonialism. But as some of the Christian ministers who I admire tremendously said the other day, we are our brother's keeper and we will not submit to evil forces, no matter how overwhelming or powerful.
Samet: That's almost romantic. But how do you give the more than half a million refugees in Sudan the strength to sustain their faith when everything seems to go against them?
Reverend Winwood: Going back to my original message, we must provide for their basic human needs in order for the people to sustain their faith. We must help them keep their faith alive. Reading the Bible and being baptized are not enough to help them survive. This is hard work. That's why I love the faith-based organizations and charities. They are taking up the slack for the UN, CARE, and the Red Cross. They are making a difference.
Samet: This seems to be a highly personal cause for you. Why is that so? Why do you need to be here at this time?
Reverend Winwood: This is a spiritual pilgrimage for me in a way. I'm saying to the Lord, “Here I stand. Use me.” After a time of prayer and talks with some leading church officials in the States and here in the region, I realized that I must speak out. It was not a difficult choice. This journey has totally changed my worldview.
Samet: What do you mean, Reverend?
Reverend Winwood: I've weathered some great challenges in life, several tragedies, but nothing compares to those faced by these Sudanese refugees. This trip has totally changed my perspective on life. Back in the States, after I went through a very life-altering experience, I was bitter, angry, isolated. Maybe I became self-important and arrogant. Some of the church officials said I'd lost the common touch. I was removed from the things that brought me pleasure and joy, that brought me a sense of satisfaction in working with the community. I stepped away from the church. My ministry ceased to be about Sundays, the mother board, the choir, or sermons. That is, until I went South to assist a friend. Alabama, that is. Everything changed. I gradually came back to the land of the living.
Samet: In your opinion, what do the Sudanese people want other than religion? Is that all they want?
Reverend Winwood: Are you crazy? They want a decent life. They want a life like we have, to enjoy their families, to have good shelter, to watch their children grow up. They want the life they see portrayed by the media in the West, where religious freedom can be celebrated. All they want, all any of them wants, is to be blessed with opportunity and hope.
Samet: What is keeping them from reaching their goal?
Reverend Winwood: The government in the north, I think.
Samet: Explain, please.
Reverend Winwood: Don't play coy. Look around you. The government has an agenda to displace the civilians in Darfur and in the south because of oil, not religion. We touched on this before. That is why they have targeted certain groups. The government does not protect these people. No peace deal is stable.
Samet: At the peace talks, I understand the government stated that it does not want to have a peacekeeping force in the southern part of Sudan. All sides have been slow to act on this. The killing and famine continue. Peacekeepers would cut down on some of the violence we see in the region. Why has the peacekeeping force been rejected?
Reverend Winwood: One of the aid doctors said that China has made a big, multibillion-dollar investment in the Sudanese oil fields. Some say over eight billion dollars. In the UN, China blocks anything being done about the killings and the genocide. The oil fields are in the south, but all the pipelines flow north. It seems many of the superpowers want to get in the game.
Samet: You brought up the religious angle. That cannot be ignored. First, do you consider yourself a deeply religious person?
Reverend Winwood: Yes, I do.
Samet: Do you believe that God is a product of the human imagination? Do you believe humans could make up a belief system that could get them off the hook in terms of ethics and behavior?
Reverend Winwood: Look around you at the wonders of life. Do you think this is a hologram? Do you think this is a dream? I don't think so.
Samet: You have different faiths competing for dominance in the world. It's like the War of the Roses or the Crusades. The fact of the matter is that human beings are fighting over their concept of God and faith. Can you accept that? China has nothing to do with this.
Reverend Winwood: God, Allah, Yahweh, or whatever. Yes, we have different views of God and faith, but there's a similarity between them when you melt them down. As for the battle between faiths, who knows what God thinks? Who can speak for God? It's a problem for me when humans speak for God with so much confidence. I've read a few articles recently that said that religious persecution is not a big issue today, and that is just not true. It's not just in the schoolbooks. It's here, it's now, and more than a billion people cannot worship the way they want.
Samet: Intolerance is very much with us.
Reverend Winwood: Blasphemy laws exist in several Arab nations. Ancient Christian communities suffer persecution every day. Some sources say that over one hundred fifty thousand Christians are killed each year because they worship the Lord.
Samet: For example, the Western media has spotlighted Boko Haram, an extremist Muslim group that has attacked Christians and Muslims alike in Nigeria. The group kidnapped the girls and women in several villages and held them for ransom. Some of them were sold as sex slaves, and others just vanished. Who knows what happened to them?
Reverend Winwood: I have read about their plight. But you must know that Christians are the most persecuted all over the world. Everybody hates us. That's why we must campaign for religious freedom. It is a building block for most of the other freedoms. Usually when you have religious liberty, you have freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to vote, freedom to learn. However, many countries of the world are afraid to let their citizens worship their own God in their own way. And that's why we had the ethnic killings in Bosnia, Germany, the Middle East, and now Sudan. Violence, death, repression.
Samet: Sudan, which is largely Muslim in the north, has been in a struggle with its Christian population for more than forty years. It's Africa's longest civil war. In reality, it has had two civil wars since 1955. The conflict heated up when South Sudan became an independent country in twenty eleven. Christians in the northern part of Sudan are having a very difficult time at present.
Reverend Winwood: In America we don't have the truly horrific images of Sudan or any of the other trouble spots in Africa. Images of a starving child, a row of burning huts, or a destroyed church will be carried on the TV evening news, but our news is sanitized. But I am on the ground, witnessing the beheadings, the machete-hacked limbs, the girls and women raped, the entire families wiped out. It is appalling.
Samet: Does the fact that President Obama has not acknowledged that America is a Judeo-Christian nation factor into Sudan's turmoil?
Reverend Winwood: The president of the United States is not the president of the world. He has very little influence over what is done in Africa. America has very little wiggle room in deciding the affairs of Africa. We threw that advantage away when we went into Iraq after the nine-eleven tragedy. Bush lied, Cheney lied, and Powell lied.
Samet: Are you saying that Islam is the enemy? Are you saying the Muslims are the cancer of the civilized world?
Reverend Winwood: You keep trying to put words in my mouth. Islam is not the enemy and never has been. There are fine and upstanding worshippers of the Islamic faith. They do not use the Koran as a license to slaughter other human beings. I was on a panel with two Muslim clerics, and they were as appalled as I was with the extremist actions in the Middle East and Central Africa.
Samet: But you must say there has been a lot of violence and death connected to the extremist Islamic followers. Every day you see killings and bombings involving members of that faith. Explain that.
Reverend Winwood: Again, Islam is not the enemy. I recall a statement by a group of one hundred thirty-eight Muslim clerics that was sent to Christian leaders in two thousand seven and that called for peace and understanding between the two religions. The clerics wrote, “If Muslims and Christians are not at peace, the world cannot be at peace.” In their statement they asked for respect, fair play, kindness, compassion, and a life filled with peace, harmony, and mutual goodwill.