Sudan: Christians under attack

...Sudanese Christians, while only comprising 5.4 percent of the country’s population, have been largely based in and around Khartoum. As the capital city has been at the epicenter of the war, the Christian community has been heavily impacted. They have been sought out and attacked for their faith, and many have had to flee the country and settle in refugee camps.  

Many churches have been destroyed. Earlier this month, Rapid Support Forces fighters attacked a Coptic Christian Monastery in Gezira State and started using it as a military base. Last month, a Presbyterian Evangelical Church in Omdurman and a Roman Catholic building in the Al-Shajara area were attacked amid Rapid Support Forces and Sudanese Armed Forces fighting. These are just the most recent examples of the ongoing spate of attacks on churches and Christian buildings since the fighting broke out.  

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Oil-hungry China welcomes alleged war criminal al-Bashir

BEIJING — If there’s one thing that gets discussed a lot regarding China’s relationship with Sudan, it’s the oil interest.

As the world’s largest energy consumer and one of the fastest-growing economies, China needs oil. Since 1995, it has invested heavily in Sudan’s oil infrastructure via the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC).

“We cannot exaggerate the importance of Sudan oil to the whole of China’s oil input,” said Dr. He Wenping of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Sudan isn't China's leading supplier in Africa; that honor more recently has gone to Angola. But Sudan does supply roughly seven per cent of the mainland's oil needs.

In return, Beijing has provided military support — most visibly in the form of weaponry — to Khartoum.

The oil-for-arms relationship provoked a huge international outcry in relation to the Darfur conflict. Western governments and human rights groups called on China to stop supplying small arms to Sudan (although Russia was just as, if not more, culpable) and to use its leverage with Sudan to end the wholesale mass killings.

But what's more interesting than simply China's oil interests in Sudan is the way in which those interests are affecting Beijing's foreign policy.

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