The Muslim family of an 18-year-old Sudanese refugee in the northern border region of South Sudan on Thursday evening (Jan. 8) expelled her from their home for her faith in Christ, sources said.
Amona Ibrahim Kaki, a refugee from Sudan’s Nuba Mountains area living in the Ajoung Thok refugee camp, had put her faith in Christ after she secretly began reading a Bible.
After discovering on Christmas Day that she had put her faith in Christ, her family was awaiting word from her old brother on her fate, the source said. On Thursday a relative had pleaded with the brother over the phone to allow her to remain at their home, but he angrily refused.
“This has never happened before in our family – she must leave the house before my arrival or else she will see the consequences,” her brother angrily told the relative, according to the source.
After attending a worship service on Dec. 25 at the Gloria Baptist Church in Ajoung Thok, neighbors monitoring her reported it to her family. Her parents asked her why she went to a church service. Kaki told them that she had had a personal encounter with Jesus and was now a Christian.
Her parents reacted with immediate hostility and, in an attempt to isolate her from the Christian community, confiscated her mobile phone, sources said. The family warned her to renounce Christ and return to Islam or else they would disown her, expel her from their home and demand she change her name from that of the family, sources said.
“She does not know what the coming days hold for her,” said one source. “In these border areas, where family law and religious tradition carry immense weight, a young woman in her position is extremely vulnerable.”
While still living in the home under a cloud of threats, she had managed to send word to local Christians, asking for prayers and urgent support as she faced an uncertain and dangerous future. At this writing, no aid agencies were aware of her situation.
Last year Kaki had found the Bible in her brother’s room, a source said.
“She found the Bible and started reading it on a daily basis,” he said. “When it was time for exams, she started to read one verse every day before going to school. She started to see changes as a result of her Bible readings.”
She continued reading the Bible for some time, he said. When Kaki became ill and medication provided no help, she called some Christian friends and asked them to call local church members to pray for her.
“After the church prayed for her, she got well, but her Muslim family thought she was possessed by a demon,” the source said. “In November last year she started to lose interest in Muslim prayers and decided to put her faith in Jesus. She started to avoid bad friends.”
She attended a church service for the first time on Nov. 30 but didn’t make her faith public until the Christmas season, when members asked why she was attending despite being Muslim. Kaki confessed that she had encountered Christ and had decided to become a Christian.
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.
