"They Were Beheaded For Being Black and Christian": Sudan's Genocide
Wad Madani, Sudan - Between 13 and 29 South Sudanese Christians were executed and beheaded by Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) troops in Wad Madani on January 11, 2025, after government forces recaptured the strategic city from rival Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia.
Videos circulated on social media showing government troops capturing and slaughtering South Sudanese civilians in the city, which is located southeast of the capital Khartoum. The massacre occurred immediately after SAF recaptured Wad Madani, which had served as a refuge for thousands fleeing the civil war, including many South Sudanese Christians.
Christian Solidarity International's project manager for South Sudan and Sudan reported that the brutality of the Wad Madani attack called to mind the actions of the Islamic State terror group. "The South Sudanese were targeted for being black and Christian," the project manager stated.
CSI International President John Eibner, an expert on the region, commented:
"This atrocity crime came hard on the heels of the U.S. State Department's claim that the rival Rapid Support Forces have committed genocide against indigenous Muslim Black Africans in Darfur in western Sudan. Politically and socially marginalized Black Africans appear to be targeted for atrocities by both rival Islamist fighting forces."
South Sudan's foreign minister, Ramadan Goc, decried the Sudanese army and its allies in an address to the United Nations Security Council on January 22, referring to the Wad Madani killings as a "live act of terrorism" and calling on the UN to back an independent investigation.
Sudan's government has opened an investigation into the atrocity but adamantly denies that the army carried out the attacks, instead blaming a militia affiliated with it. Sudan's foreign ministry denounced Goc's remarks as a call for foreign intervention and accused South Sudan of "inciting violence against Sudanese nationals" and "harboring and supporting" the Rapid Support Forces.
The January massacre is part of a broader pattern of Christian persecution in Sudan's ongoing civil war, which began in April 2023 when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the rebel Rapid Support Forces. Since the start of the war, observers have accused both the SAF and the RSF of singling out Christians for attack and destroying churches in areas they control.
Sudan now ranks fifth on Open Doors' 2025 World Watch List of the most dangerous countries for Christians, climbing from 13th place in 2022 to 10th in 2023, 8th in 2024, and now 5th in 2025. The country has experienced a "sharp rise in attacks on Christian communities and churches" over the past year.
More than 100 churches have been damaged since the war began. In 2023, RSF fighters stormed Khartoum's Anglican cathedral, assaulting civilians and converting it into a military base, while SAF airstrikes leveled the Al Ezba Baptist Church in Khartoum North. Both sides have carried out arbitrary detentions, with SAF interrogating and beating dozens of Christians in 2024 and 2025.
In December 2024, RSF fighters set fire to the Evangelical Church of Wad Madani and later that month attacked the Sudanese Church of Christ in Al Jazirah State during a prayer service, wounding 14 worshippers. One RSF militant reportedly vowed to "eliminate all Christians."
On April 18, 2023, just three days after the war started, SAF bombed and partially destroyed the Evangelical Church in Bahri, north of Khartoum. Later that month, SAF shelled a Christian compound in Gerief West in Khartoum which houses a Bible School and the Sudan Presbyterian Evangelical Church.
The same compound had been attacked, burned, and bulldozed by Islamic extremists in 2012. On November 1, 2023, SAF shelled and destroyed the Evangelical church in Omdurman. Buildings belonging to churches, including the Evangelical Commercial School and Evangelical Secondary School, were also bombed.
Sudan's approximately 2 million Christians, representing about 4% of the population, face a double burden of desperation. Like all Sudanese people, they face chronic food shortages and the horror of war. But Christians are also singled out for discrimination and persecution by both sides in the conflict.
A Sudanese church leader interviewed by Fox News described the dire situation for Christians in El Fasher, a city under siege by the RSF:
"For a long time now, they're eating animal feed and grass. No wheat, no rice, nothing can get in. And, unfortunately now, no medicine. If you have just the flu it can kill you. We don't know what to do. We are just always asking God [to] have mercy on us."
RSF militants have allegedly forced Christians to convert to Islam in exchange for aid and protection. Some reports indicate that as many as 165 churches have closed during Sudan's civil war as both military factions attack Christian sites and force conversions to Islam for aid access.
In August 2025, five South Sudanese Christians were arrested during a funeral prayer gathering in El Haj Yousif, a neighborhood in North Khartoum. Among those taken was Pastor Peter Perpeny, a well-known leader with the Presbyterian Church of Sudan. "We were simply holding a burial service," Pastor Perpeny said. "It was meant to be a quiet, respectful moment to honor the departed." The group was taken to Omdurman Prison.
"There is a growing fear among the South Sudanese Christians, so they remain indoors in order to avoid being arrested," a church leader explained.
Earlier in 2025, 19 Christians were arrested in Madani, accused of being linked to rebel groups opposing the government. In Shendi, seven displaced Christians were arrested and tortured. Their trial lasted only minutes, and rights groups say they did not receive fair legal treatment.
In June 2025, four Sudanese Christian men were arrested for violating a previously annulled apostasy law demanding a death sentence for leaving Islam.
Although in July 2020 the transitional government decriminalized apostasy and enacted the Fundamental Rights and Freedoms Act prohibiting the labeling of any group as "infidels," prosecutors have used a repealed article of the criminal code against Christians. The four men were viciously abused and their Bibles were confiscated before they were released.
"Sudan has been locked in a brutal internal conflict since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces," a church leader explained. "In many areas, law and order has collapsed, and in places controlled by the Rapid Support Forces, like parts of North Khartoum, civilians are often caught in the middle. That collapse has made it easier for religious minorities to be targeted."
The civil war has made Sudan home to the world's largest displacement crisis and the world's largest hunger crisis. Nearly 9 million people have been forced to flee their homes. Between 13 million and 15 million have been displaced, and an estimated 150,000 have been killed since the war began.
Neither side in the conflict is sympathetic to Christians, and the war has given Islamist extremists more opportunity to target them. Christians from Muslim backgrounds face severe backlash from their families and communities and tend to keep their faith secret.
Christians are experiencing exceptional hardship in the hunger crisis because local communities discriminate against them and refuse to provide support.
A U.S. State Department spokesperson told Fox News: "Since the April 2023 outbreak of conflict in Sudan, we have witnessed significant backsliding in Sudan's overall respect for fundamental freedoms, including religious freedom. This backsliding especially impacts Sudan's marginalized ethnic and religious populations, including Christians. Sudan was a country of particular concern under the former Bashir regime, and the United States is focused on preventing the return of Bashir-era loyalists and other violent extremists."
In late January 2025, the United States declared that Sudan's Rapid Support Forces were guilty of committing an ongoing genocide in Sudan, citing systematic murder of men and boys and widespread sexual violence against women and girls of the Masalit ethnic group. The U.S. levied sanctions against the RSF, its leaders, and companies in the United Arab Emirates that had been supporting the group financially.
The 2011 independence of South Sudan, the predominantly Christian component of the previously unified Sudan, dealt a blow to the Christian community that remained in northern Sudan. Three months after South Sudan's independence, then-President Omar al-Bashir declared Sudan would adopt an entirely Islamic constitution. Since then, attacks on churches and Christians worsened until Bashir's overthrow in a 2019 revolution. However, a military coup on October 25, 2021 led to the return of deadly state-sponsored persecution.
"We have so many challenges and pray that what I say, God will hear and see my tears due to this situation and war," said Alia, a Christian internally displaced person at a camp in southern Sudan.
THE CRUSADER'S OPINION
Beheaded. For being black. For being Christian.
Twenty-nine Christians executed in Wad Madani.
Videos of their slaughter circulating online.
Bodies piled in the streets.
This is January 2025.
This is happening right now while Western churches debate pronouns and coffee flavors.
Both sides of Sudan's civil war are slaughtering Christians.
The Sudanese Armed Forces beheads them as "RSF collaborators." The Rapid Support Forces burns their churches and forces conversion to Islam for food. Christians in El Fasher are eating animal feed and grass.
Mothers watch their children die from the flu because there's no medicine. And what does the church militant in the West do? Nothing.
One hundred churches destroyed.
Pastors arrested at funerals.
Christians tortured for holding prayer meetings. A militant vows to "eliminate all Christians" and follows through.
This is genocide with a religious motive, and we pretend it's just "civil war."
When will we call evil by its name? When will we demand our governments act? How many more heads must roll before we stop being comfortable?
TAKE ACTION
Support Persecuted Sudanese Christians:
- Christian Solidarity International: https://www.csi-int.org
- Email: csi@csi-int.ch
Humanitarian Relief:
- Open Doors USA: https://www.opendoorsus.org/en-US/persecution/countries/sudan/
- Phone: 1-888-524-2535
Contact Your Government:
- U.S. State Department: https://www.state.gov/contact-us/
- Demand action for Sudan's Christians
Prayer and Advocacy:
- SAT-7: https://sat7.org (Christian broadcasting reaching Sudan)
- Email: info@sat7usa.org
