Life seemed to be looking better for a refugee from Sudan who had fled to Ethiopia and South Sudan, put his faith in Christ, and then found a job at his uncle’s business in Uganda.
After fleeing war-torn Khartoum, Essam Juma Abdelkreem had first attended Sunday worship twice in a refugee camp in Ethiopia in 2024. Trekking to South Sudan that year, Abdelkreem later put his faith in Christ in January. He attended a discipleship training for six months and was baptized on June 18, an evangelist said.
Relocating to northern Uganda’s refugee camp in Bweyale, he made contact with a Muslim uncle who requested that he help him manage his 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 of Animal Production at the 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 prayers of Islam; then she noted that he no longer read the Quran or attended mosque prayers.
Abdelkreem said she secretly searched his bag and found a Bible and copies of discipleship certificates.
“She immediately reported to my uncle. Upon hearing the report, my uncle was emotionally upset and ordered me to leave his shop and his house immediately” and chased him away on Oct. 25, Abdelkreem told Morning Star News.
He has since returned to South Sudan and is staying with Christians, he said.
“Life is becoming hard, and I do not want to depend on my friends,” he said.
Church Vandalized
In Port Sudan on the Red Sea, Christians were disturbed to find a Muslim writing slogans on a church wall on Wednesday (Nov. 26), sources said.
A video circulating on social media from a CCTV camera dating the vandalism in real time at 15:12 p.m., Nov. 26, shows a person coming out of a vehicle with paint near the gate of the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church-Port Sudan and later writing on the wall in Arabic, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is the Prophet of Allah.”
The video, which also shows him writing other slogans in red paint in Arabic, sparked outrage on social media among Sudanese church leaders. Philip Abdelmasih SPEC called the action an act of terror that will not only destroy the social fabric of Sudan but is a real threat to Christian existence in Port Sudan and other parts of the country.
“This is a deliberate act of the Islamists and might be the beginning of Boko Haram-like acts in Sudan,” Abdelmasih wrote in a WhatsApp group.
The Rev. Yousif Mattar Kodi of SPEC called on Christians to not be silent in the face of the act, which he said was an attack against the church and country. He warned security agencies, religious leaders and all citizens to be vigilant.
Another evangelical leader in Port Sudan confirmed the vandalism.
“The Coptic Orthodox church was also targeted as well, we have informed the authorities about the incident, and we expect them to arrest the culprit who was captured by the CCTV camera,” said the pastor, whose identity is withheld for security reasons.
Sudan is 93 percent Muslim, with adherents of ethnic traditional religion 4.3 percent of the population, while Christians constitute 2.3 percent, according to Joshua Project.
Sudan was ranked No. 5 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2025 World Watch List (WWL), down from No. 8 the prior year. Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in 2021.
The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.
