A cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church suggested that...

A cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church suggested that the time may be right for the launch of an international campaign of protest against Sudan for violating human rights, according to reports from the Rome-based international news agency Zenit, which specialises in reporting Catholic affairs.
Cardinal Roberto Tucci, president of Vatican Radio's administration committee, made the call when commenting on the case of Abok Alfa Akok, who had been condemned to death by stoning for allegedly being pregnant out of wedlock in December 2001, the agency stated.
An appeals court in Southern Darfur State, bordering the Central African Republic, had recently overturned the sentence of death by stoning against Akok, and sent the case back to a lower court in the state for fresh sentencing.
The original ruling was made in line with Shari'ah [Islamic] law, even though Akok - a member of Sudan's Dinka tribe, the largest ethnic group in the south - was Christian, according to Reuters.
"For years in Sudan there has been authentic persecution by the Muslim government against the peoples of the south, [with] black skins, of Christian or animist religion," Zenit quoted Tucci as saying on Vatican Radio.
"The Shari'ah has been applied to a person who is not Muslim," he said. "It would be appropriate to start a campaign of protest against what is happening. Why doesn't the United Nations intervene?"
The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Sudan, Gerhart Baum, said in a report in November 2001 that it was untrue - as some Christian fundamentalists argued - that there was a war of religious persecution in Sudan. There was concern over restrictions on freedom of religion, discrimination and the increasingly Islamic character of education and public life, but there was no systematic suppression of Christian churches, he said.
"The United Nations Commission for Human Rights is concerned with the [Akok] case, but perhaps this action should be supported by an authentic international campaign that will serve to shed light on the Sudanese situation," Zenit quoted Tucci as saying.
Among those to indicate support for Tucci's suggestion had been Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kisangani, Democratic Republic of the Congo, the president of the Symposium of the Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), the agency added.
Sudan is still under the State of Emergency rule declared by President Umar Hasan al-Bashir at the end of 2000 after a political struggle with the former Speaker of parliament, Hasan al-Turabi. Security laws are being tightened and the security police stepping up their activities.