In J.K. Rowlings Harry Potter novels, Lord Voldemort is often referred to obliquely as “He who must not be named.” The alias, acting as a protective verbal demarcation for those who do not want to risk conjuring the Dark Lord. We speak of ‘him’ but we do not name him.
I couldn’t help but think of this last week after reading the transcript of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee debate on Sudan. Perhaps it was because I had just watched the Half Blood Prince with some of my kids. In any event, let me explain why.
But first, and to be clear; many good things were said at the Committee, and overall, it was a valuable and worthwhile debate given the unconscionable lack of international and parliamentary focus regarding a conflict that has turned Sudan into something like an Hieronymus Bosch hellscape since the most recent war began in April 2023.
The three NGO reps who were invited to share their views and to provide an update on their work in Sudan, Concern, Trócaire, and Front Line Defenders, all spoke movingly and with an obvious humanitarian impulse and professionalism that cannot be second guessed.
Dominic Crowley, the CEO of Concern made a striking and haunting contribution that is worth quoting in full. Referring to the tens of millions impacted by the conflict, he rightly cautioned that, “with numbers as large as these, we risk falling into the trap outlined in the quotation often attributed to Stalin: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.”
He went on, “the true horror of what is happening in Sudan can be summarised in two brief examples. In March, a UNICEF report identified 221 instances of child rape in nine states in Sudan in 2024. A third of these were of boys and 16 of the rapes were of children under five years of age, including four one-year-olds.” “Last October, the Rapid Support Forces, RSF, seized El Fasher after an 18-month siege, which saw, among other things: a drone strike on a crowded maternity hospital that killed 70 people and injured many more; the massacre of 1,500 people in a three-day attack on Zamzam camp, the largest refugee camp in the region; and the post-siege massacre of tens of thousands of civilians in El Fasher in the worst war crime of the conflict.”
For her part Ms Birke Herzbruch, head of the fragile and conflicted-affected states portfolio at Trócaire, spoke of the organisation seeing nutrition supplies “exhausted within weeks, with over 250% morbidity rates spiking and a fivefold rise in cases of malnutrition in children under five. Prices for basic commodities are so high that a teacher’s salary now only buys 4 kg of sugar”
Yet, amid this detailed examination, a critical element was absent: any explicit reference to the targeted persecution of Christians.
Words such as “Christian,” “Church,” “Bishop,” “Priest,” or “Pastor” did not appear once in the proceedings.
Given the forensic level of data that exists on the scale of Christian persecution in Sudan from the US State Department and organisations such as Aid to the Church in Need, from 2017 onwards, this silence demands an explanation.
Indeed 2017 Aid to the Church in Need report revealed how “Christian children in refugee camps in Sudan are not receiving food until they say Islamic prayers.” These practices continue to this day.
Yonas Dembele, persecution analyst at World Watch Research also commented at the time that: “In Sudan, Christians are suffering from state-sanctioned persecution in many forms. However, this report hails a new low. Morally speaking, forcing children to recite religious prayers in order to get food is inhumane. From the point of view of international human rights, this directly violates freedom of religion or the obligation that the refugee convention imposes on states. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief stressed that most vulnerable groups like refugees must be protected from all forms of discrimination based on their faith.”
Of course, it is true to say that both Concern and Front Line Defenders are both non-denominational and so the absence of any reference to Christians can be half understood, however much we may personally lament that fact.
But what of Trócaire, which is after all, at least in name, the official overseas development agency of the Catholic Church in Ireland?
Perhaps it was the limited time the Committee had to debate the issues ( 2 hours)?
Perhaps Trócaire referred to Christian persecution in its written statement to the Committee?
After all Ms Birke Herzbruch did begin her in person remarks by stating, “I will not repeat our written statement, but I will highlight some of the stark realities we are currently seeing in Sudan.”
No. Regrettably it was neither of these things.
Try as you might you will find no specific reference to Christians in the written statement either. A rather odd omission to say the least.
To say this represents a profound missed opportunity to confront the specificity of religious violence in Sudan, thereby diluting the debate into a generalised narrative that overlooks documented atrocities against a vulnerable minority such as Christians, is to considerably understate the matter.
I am not ascribing a malicious motive here. But I am genuinely confused and indeed saddened by the absence of the words ‘Christian’ or the term ‘Christian persecution’ from what was a rare as hens teeth debate on the Sudan catastrophe in which Christians have been mercilessly and relentlessly targeted.
To bring it back to Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort.
It is worth noting that Dumbledore actively opposed this whole ‘He who shall not be named’ business. He tells Harry to “always use the proper name for things,” as “fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself,”
(A man is a man. A woman is a woman etc. But that is also for another day)
Were the contributors afraid of using the word ‘Christian’? Why did no one mention it, at all, either guests or Oireachtas members? Did they think that by using it they might conjure up a perception of themselves that would be lethal to their political stock?
Perhaps all of this reflects a broader trend in international discourse, where religious persecution is subsumed under neutral humanitarian labels.
Whatever the reason; I can only hope the next time Bishops development agency reps are before the politicians, they do not shirk from being unfashionably specific.