Rowan Williams, spiritual leader of more than 70 million Anglicans worldwide, urged Sudan to be more tolerant towards religious minorities in the mainly Muslim country and return confiscated church property. On his first visit to Sudan, the Archbishop of Canterbury will travel to both sides of a bitter north-south civil war to encourage progress in implementing a peace deal signed last year to end the bloodshed which claimed some two million lives. “In the tragic years that have gone by Sudan has been known for conflict and for poverty,” he told reporters at a news conference in Khartoum, where Islamic Sharia Law is in force. “The question is how will the government ... of this country in the years ahead make sure that Sudan is known for creative, democratic, tolerant policies that will work for the good of an entire population,” he added.
Religion and the imposition of Sharia on the mainly Christian and animist south was a major catalyst for the outbreak of the civil war which forced more than four million people to flee their homes. Many of them sought refuge in slum camps around Khartoum, the base of the Islamist government which pursued a policy of Islamisation of the population. Despite the peace deal, Sharia is still in force in the national capital, where Sudanese of many religions live. A commission to protect the rights of non-Muslims in Khartoum, as specified by the peace deal, has yet to be formed more than year after it was signed.