Khartoum, Sudan, Apr 12, 2011 / 01:13 am
The Bishop of Khartoum in northern Sudan says that outbreaks of violence will not prevent the country's south from seceding and forming an independent country in July 2011.
“These violent incidents will impede progress, but it will not wash away from them their wish to acquire independence,” Auxiliary Bishop Daniel Adwok of Khartoum recently told the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. “The wish to be independent from the north is not somehow grafted onto them – it is in their heart that they want to be independent.”
Bishop Adwok said the violence was mostly confined to specific locations, and he did not expect it to expand into a revival of the civil wars that killed millions of Sudanese during the 20th century. But he said it was important for the government in southern Sudan, which is already semi-autonomous, to investigate the violence and work to resolve its basic causes for the good of the future nation.
“It would be best to sit down and discuss the issues,” he said. “We have to ask the people: ‘What is the root of the tension?' If we do not address that, after some months or years it will cause the disturbance to widen.”