SUDAN-POLITICS: Christian Rebels Hold Six Catholic Missionaries

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

NAIROBI, Aug 27 1996 (IPS) - The rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) is holding six Catholic missionaries on suspicion of spying for the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum.

The missionaries, one Sudanese clergyman, an American priest, three Australian nuns and an Italian brother, are being detained at Mapourdit, about 200 kilometres north of the main southern town of Juba.

“The charges against the missionaries are: hindering SPLA recruitment, being found in possession of documents proving that they are spies from foreign countries, working for the spread of Islam under the disguise of the Cross,” Fr Kizito Sesana of the Sudan Catholic Information Office in Nairobi quoted SPLA officials as alleging.

“We don’t know what these accusations really mean because some of the missionaries are rather elderly like sister Moira Lynch who is 73 years old and she has worked all her life in a Christian institution,” said Sesana. “Now to think she is spreading Islam and she is a spy is rather difficult to comprehend.”

He said Lynch, Mary Batchelor, 68, U.S. national Michael Barton, 48, and Raphael Riel, a Sudanese, were being detained in prison while Australian Maureen Carey and Italian Raniero Iacomella were being held in the Mapourdit mission compound.

The six were running a parish, a primary school with 1,500 students and a dispensary.

“I saw them personally Friday evening for a few minutes,” said Sesana. “I was not allowed to talk with them. But they seemed to be in rather good physical condition. But we are afraid that the tougher conditions of the Sudan bush are rather taxing. In addition to that there is the pyschological threat of being in prison, of being (branded) traitors and so on.

“They cannot communicate with anybody there in the area, even with the civilians living there. They are held in total isolation.”

Sesana and Monsignor Caesar Mazzolari, Apostolic Administrator of the Diocese of Rumbek, of which Mapourdit is a part, flew Friday from Nairobi to Akot, 35 km from Mapourdit, to collect the missionaries, but returned without them.

“We were told that no instructions to release the prisoners had been received and that they will be held until investigations are completed,” said Sesana.

Unable to secure their release, Mazzolari and Sesana decided on Sunday to return to Nairobi to inform the U.S., Italian and Australian embassies about the fate of their nationals, and to intensify contacts with the SPLA leadership.

The Sudan Catholic Information Office suspects that the real reason for the missionaries’ abduction is the fact that they dared to speak out against the forced recruitment of children by the SPLA, a 13-year-old rebel force fighting for self-determination for southern Sudan, whose people are mainly Christians and followers of African religions.

“We had an informal agreement that no school children will be recruited by force in the SPLA force,” said Sesana. “The father responsible for the school has been reacting strongly against forced recruitment of children in the SPLA.”

The Sudanese government recently accused the SPLA of abducting 1,500 minors from refugee camps in Uganda and Kenya to fight in southern Sudan. It urged Uganda, Kenya and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to guarantee refugee children’s protection from the rebels.

According to Mazzolari, the incident in Mapourdit started on Aug. 17 at five a.m. when the mission was surrounded and sealed off by SPLA forces. “The same evening the six missionaries were arrested,” he said. “Later, the mission was looted.”

The SPLA office in Nairobi attributed the abduction to a local commander and told the press the six would be freed by noon on Aug. 23. It did not happen.

Mazzolari has appealed to the SPLA, especially to its leader, Colonel John Garang, to guarantee the well-being of the missionaries while the “investigations” take their course.

“I’m certain that the missionaries will prove to be totally innocent,” he said. “Once released, we shall continue to provide humanitarian, educational and religious work to the population of Mapourdit.”

David de Chand, the Nairobi representative of the Southern Sudan Independence Movement (SSIM) — a rebel group opposed to the SPLA — called upon the international community to condemn the detention of the missionaries.

“They are lucky because they are foreigners,” he told IPS on Tuesday. “If they were all locals you wouldn’t have heard about them. What is happening in Mapourdit is what we have been preaching against since 1991.”

The SSIM is led by Riak Machar, who broke away from the SPLA in 1991, accusing Garang of human rights abuses.