Sudan’s new Minister of Religious Affairs attended the Christmas Day service of a long-persecuted church.
The Sudanese government had announced Christmas as a public holiday for the first time in eight years. Minister of Religious Affairs Nasr al-Din Mufreh accompanied senior government officials at the service of Khartoum Bahri Evangelical Church – a congregation that the previous Islamist government had harassed for years.
Sudan has also repealed the strict sharia law that controlled how women acted and dressed in public. Under the previous regime of former President Omar al-Bashir, women could be thrown in prison for letting a little hair show or for travelling on a bus without a man to accompany them.
