Rumbek Christians To Visit Liberators’ Mass Grave

The Sudan Catholic Church together with other church leaders will next week honour heroes and heroines of the Sudan civil war.

The clergy who are meeting in Rumbek starting this weekend will join other church leaders, government officials and the local community in visiting a mass burial site where massacred South Sudanese were buried, some 6 kilometres west of the Lakes State capital Rumbek.

Bishop Caesar Mazzolari of Rumbek Diocese described the ground as “a special place where the liberators were brutally killed four decades ago”.

He explained that the visit will be conducted to in memory of people who were real patriots, adding that some of them were killed in hatred of their faith.

The Bishop cited Father Arkangelo Ali who was brutally killed in July 1965 and dragged together with other 14 killed prisoners and buried in a mass grave close to what is presently Loreto Girls’ Secondary School.

Bishop Mazzolari further said that hundreds of local community members were also killed in the environs of the school and buried in mass graves in 1971.

“The visit remembers people who died while fighting for freedom and died in order to bring peace and reconciliation”, he said, adding that reconciliation calls for openness of heart and practice of forgiveness.

About 2 million people were killed during the protracted North-South civil war in the Sudan that ended with the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in January 2005.