WASHINGTON \u2014 A story can be inspirational without having a happy ending.<\/p>\n\n
Activist Jim Jacobson of Christian Freedom International is used to seeing suffering during his illegal visits to Southern Sudan, where war bands sent by Khartoum\u2019s Islamist regime continue to terrorize Christians, animists and even other Muslims. But his face still clouds over when he describes what happened this April to a tribal matriarch in the burned-out village of Akoch Payam.<\/p>\n\n
It\u2019s not an unusual story. That\u2019s the problem. It\u2019s a frighteningly ordinary snapshot of life in the overseas twilight zones in which intolerance, violence, politics and big business are creating nightmares for many believers.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cReligious persecution is so widespread and the issue is so complex. Sometimes it seems like there is nothing that governments and bureaucrats can do,\u201d said Jacobson, a former Reagan White House staff member who now works in hands-on relief work. \u201cThere are so many stories to tell that you can end up leaving people stunned. I mean, everybody talks about Sudan and China. But this is bigger than that. Things are happening all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
To cite one example, Jacobson noted that he has made nine trips into Burma during the past 12 months, leading \u201cbackpack medical teams\u201d into areas in which the government is pitting Buddhists against Baptists, with tragic results. He\u2019s also watching events unfold here in the nation\u2019s capital, where the new U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom \u2013 which grew out of legislation passed last year \u2013 is holding its first meetings.<\/p>\n\n
Meanwhile, Sudan\u2019s hellish civil war is finally receiving attention because of a strong media hook \u2013 the renewal of slave trade. But, again, the story is more complex than that.<\/p>\n\n
When Jacobson\u2019s plane landed, a family rushed out with the body of a grandmother named Anchor Ring. She had been hacked with a machete as more raiders rolled through the region on horseback, stealing the latest United Nations shipment of food and kidnapping new slaves to carry away the spoils. The head wound was so deep that Jacobson and a journalist traveling with him could see the yellow membrane around her brain.<\/p>\n\n
Her tribesmen pleaded: Could the plane carry her to Lokichokio? A hospital there, just over the border in Kenya, offered the latest in Western technology.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cWe radioed the U.N. compound, but we already knew what would happen,\u201d said Jacobson. \u201cThey asked if she had a passport and visa to travel into Kenya. Right! Does she have a passport and visa? First of all, we\u2019re hundreds of miles out in the bush. It\u2019s like stepping back 6,000 years in time out there. On top of that, we\u2019re in rebel territory in the middle of a civil war. Who has the power to give out passports? The government in Khartoum, that\u2019s who.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
No, she didn\u2019t have a passport and visa. Then the hospital is full, said a U.N. official.<\/p>\n\n
The tribesmen could see that the plane was half-empty and they struggled to grasp the politics of the situation. They didn\u2019t understand that, just over the border, bureaucrats were waiting with a book of regulations. They would make Jacobson turn the plane around and take the injured woman back into the bush, back into the war zone in which her grandchildren were being kidnapped and sold into slavery. It would cost nearly $10,000 to make the symbolic gesture of flying her to the hospital, knowing she would be turned away.<\/p>\n\n
Jacobson did what he could, leaving behind medical supplies that might save her life.<\/p>\n\n
Whenever he tells this story, listeners want to know if Anchor Ring survived. And what about the others injured in the raid? What about those who were kidnapped as slaves? What about the burned houses, the burned churches?<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened to her,\u201d said Jacobson. \u201cThere\u2019s no easy way to communicate with those villages, except to go there. We\u2019ll have to go back and we will go back. There\u2019s just so many places we need to go, right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON \u2014 A story can be inspirational without having a happy ending. Activist Jim Jacobson of Christian Freedom International is used to seeing suffering during his illegal visits to Southern Sudan, where war bands sent by Khartoum\u2019s Islamist regime continue to terrorize Christians, animists and even other Muslims. But his face still clouds over when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n