Bridge over the White Nile that connects Omdurman with Khartoum. (Bertramz, Creative Commons)

JUBA, South Sudan (Morning Star News) – A congregation in Omdurman, Sudan fears their church building could be destroyed at any moment due to government targeting and bureaucratic delay, sources said.

Local land authorities arrived unannounced at the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) in the Al-Murzouq area of Block 59 on July 21 and warned of a planned demolition, claiming the structure was built on open public land and therefore illegal, the church pastor said. Omdurman is the twin city of Khartoum across the Nile River.

When church leaders presented legal property title deeds and ownership documentation dating back decades – the building was constructed in the early 1980s – and raised objections, officials instructed them to present the documents to land authorities in Kereri, Omdurman, said the church’s pastor, Tia Alasara Malasa  Kuku.

Upon presenting their papers in Kereri, officials redirected church leaders to the Ministry of Religious Affairs.

“You know things to do with the churches are hard here,” Pastor Malasa Kuku said. “The Ministry of Religious Affairs referred our papers to the Department of Engineering Affairs and Urban Planning, where our papers remain stuck.”

Land authorities initially gave the congregation a two-week period to resolve the matter. When that deadline passed, officials granted an additional one-week extension the first week of August, he said.

With official paperwork stuck in government bureaucracy, the church faces immediate demolition of their building, he said.

“The church, which serves about 300 members, risks possible demolition at any time,” Pastor Malasa Kuku said. “The authorities plan to destroy the building in the name of it being built on an open public space as the government claims, but we church leaders say we are being targeted.”

Sudan has a history of routine confiscation or church properties as part of its systematic persecution of Christians, leading church leaders to accuse authorities of systematic religious persecution.

In the Mayo Angola area of southern Khartoum, a Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church site received a similar threat on June 7. The director of planning of Jebel Aulia District, accompanied by an engineer from the land department, informed leaders that their building could be demolished at any time, a source said.

The lands official gave a strong warning without setting a date for the demolition, saying only, “Be ready,” the source said.

Authorities claimed without evidence that the church building is constructed on a road – which the church leaders deny – and that it is located on land not zoned for a religious building. Christians in Sudan have long complained that authorities refuse to designate lands for church buildings and use it as a pretext to bulldoze them.

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.

Authorities in Sudan on July 8, 2025 demolished a church complex in Khartoum North. With no prior warning, bulldozers and trucked accompanied by police and armed forces personnel arrived at the compound of the Pentecostal Church in the El-Haj Yousif area of East Nile District at noon and began demolishing the church building, sources told local media.

Officials initially gave no reason for demolishing the building, which included a worship hall and administrative offices, sources said.

The church, which belonged to the Sudan Pentecostal Church denomination (SPC), constructed the building in the early 1990s, according to Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW). Christians called on the Sudan Council of Churches, an ecumenical body, to take notice of the religious freedom violation.

Officials reportedly did not ask for ownership papers of the church building before demolishing it. Authorities later told church officials the building was destroyed as part of a drive to remove “unregulated” buildings throughout Khartoum state, according to Christian support group Open Doors.

Sudan was ranked No. 4 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List (WWL), down from No. 5 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.

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