Welcome back to our Arise Africa podcast in partnership with the Association of Evangelicals in Africa. Arise Africa is a campaign which aims to bring sustained awareness to the problem of extremist violence and its impact on Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa. Our aim is for you to gain an insight of what is happening in Africa.

The violence taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa threatens the Church and weakens the Body of Christ. As Open Doors, our focus is not just merely on looking at how militant violence is impacting Africa, but how it is impacting the Church. Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa are severely suffering due to militant violence and are amongst those most vulnerable because of their faith in Christ.

In this episode we will be speaking to Amora who works for Open Doors. She has first-hand experience dealing with the extreme violence across Central Africa. This is part two of the conversation, if you haven’t yet had a chance to listen to part one, please do so.

Amora retells the story of how two women got treated after a violent attack and how the community and family could not care for them. These two women were part of a group of six. They had spent two weeks working in a farm with their husbands and then at the end of the two weeks they gathered their farm produce to go and sell.

And along the road they were attacked by six armed men who raped them and kept them captive for five days during which continued raping them. And at the end of the five days told them to go. Now, back in the community.

For one, her name is Naomi. Her husband told her, I cannot live with you again. We have been infected.

I cannot bear to live with you. And she says he just left. She doesn’t know where he is.

She’s staying with five children. That’s one. The second one, Marie, she says her husband is still there but it’s the same narrative.

He doesn’t want anything to do with her. He doesn’t want to touch her. He doesn’t consider her.

So she’s just there on her own. These are two families that used to be okay. Now they are broken.

Marie has seven children and she tells us even her children do not consider her again. You know, they don’t consider her like their mother of all. If she speaks to them, they answer her rudely.

And she’s just there. She’s like a shadow in the house. When they walk along the road, people point fingers at them and tell them, oh, that’s a Sileka’s wife.

They get mocked at. And Naomi was sharing, if people speak behind you, it’s even better, but say it to your face. They’ll laugh at you to your face.

See if you’re caught for that or for yourself. So these are two women who had good homes, I would say. But after this happened, their homes are broken.

And it’s the case for many. Some of these women get raped in front of their husbands. And it’s not easy to experience that and to act as though nothing happened.

And one of the church leaders we spoke to in the community where these women were, it’s like this is a deliberate move. The idea is to break these women, break their community, break the family, break their community, break their trust and their belief in God. Because if everything around you seems to fall away, your health, your family, your community, sometimes even the church is not supportive of such cases.

Then you ask yourself, well, is there a God? So it’s not the bound of the incident. It’s just one incident and the spiralling effect of it is the objective that is aimed to be achieved. So many families are affected in this way.

To have the women who have to shoulder the weight of the family and the burden of being abandoned, it’s not easy. Amora shares this compounding reality of how the enemy wants to break communities. This is the reality particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon.

Women are neglected and abandoned. This is not just a physical war, but also an emotional one for many women in persecuted countries in Africa. And there is this other reality, which has been recurrent in the DRC, even in the far north of Cameroon, where there was a period we had like six or seven cases at the go.

A woman and her husband get kidnapped. The husband is killed. The woman manages to flee and she was pregnant.

And then when she comes back into the community after fleeing from captivity, the family pushes her away. On the one hand, she gets told, why did you survive and our son died? You must not be a good person. We don’t want anything to do with you.

It could be the only way to cope with the pain, but that’s the reality is that the woman who has lost her husband now loses her family. Sometimes she gets kicked out of the family home and she has to find a place to start life anew with her own children. So at the same time, she’s grieving the loss of her husband, she’s grieving the loss of her family.

And you know, for us, typical Africa, we do not marry the person, we marry into the family. And when you’ve lost your spouse, you want to continue feeling the belonging to this family, so that you feel like you’ve not completely lost touch with the person. But now even the family in law sends you out and you can imagine the emotional weight it takes on them.

During these attacks, we had a young lady in the far north of Cameroon, Ashu. During an attack where Boko Haram came on the village, they killed her father-in-law, killed her husband, they killed her daughter, and they killed her son. And she had to flee, she was pregnant.

Now she finally gave birth to this child. And then the family in law put her out. How do you cope if you’ve lost everything? So it’s compounding pain, but obviously families, this violent persecution tears families apart in many ways.

Because of the pain, because of the loss, because of the cultural realities, it’s really breaking families. Another reason why I think it’s important to get awareness is because most of these attacks, sometimes when they find themselves in the news, they get reported as just incidents, just attacks. But they are not just incidents, they are not just attacks, it is not just violence.

It is violence against Christians because of their faith. The reality we face is profoundly heartbreaking. Christians are enduring persecution solely for their unwavering faith in Jesus Christ.

In our earlier discussion with Ilya, a senior analyst at Open Doors focussing on freedom of religion and belief in sub-Saharan Africa, he shed light on the impact of displacement that is inflicting deep trauma across communities. He describes the struggle for integration into society, which is made nearly impossible by the relentless attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by militants in parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The suffering is immense and the resilience of these communities is tested daily.

We have been displaced, we don’t know what to do or where to go to seek protection, to have protection to save their lives. So they have been displaced for so many times, now they are tired, they are exhausted, they don’t know where to go. They are calling for protection from the government and international community.

Women kidnapped, even when they are released, they are facing sometimes trauma. So they are very traumatised by the experience. Some of them may survive, but they have experienced violence, high level of violence.

There’s no trauma counselling. They are in need of trauma counselling or support because they have experienced unusual things. Some, they have seen their parents or their relatives killed in their presence.

So it’s affecting them. So when they return, they may be dealing with trauma issues, they may need counselling. In other cases, women kidnapped back, they have experienced rape, transformed into sex slaves, which means, so again, they may experience stigmatisation from their community.

It’s very difficult for them to integrate, to get back and normal way of living within their own community. It’s very difficult to be accepted. Some of them will come back with children.

So it’s a very big issue. In Northern Cameroon, we have experienced that, we are observed that, stories of women back released, but finding it very difficult to integrate, to be accepted in their own community. One of the key issues we need to mention here is the level of violence and the patterns.

The attacks are taking place almost, I would say, on a daily basis or weekly basis, affecting the rural community. Generally speaking, ADF, the way ADF is operating is telling a lot. They attack generally overnight, when people are deep asleep.

They attack generally rural communities, farmers. In these areas, people are farmers. So they are living in their communities, smaller villages where there’s no protection.

So in recent weeks, we observed this kind of attack again happening. People are telling the store to flee. They said in the recent attacks, again, many have been kidnapped.

This is another pattern. Kidnapping is a big issue. So the ADF militants, when they attack, they attack and kill, but they kidnap people.

There were about a hundred or thousands of people are unknown. They don’t know where they are. They are only supposing because they are not there, they were kidnapped or they were killed.

So sometimes, some of them are rescued, not at all. So kidnapping is a big issue because also DRC is a predominantly Christian country. So it’s making it very difficult to highlight this issue, the issue of persecution affecting the majority by a minority, by a small armed group, the ADF affecting there.

It’s a personal story, but community story, affecting Christians in Eastern DRC. Amora shares this compounding reality of how the enemy wants to break communities. This is the reality, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Cameroon.

Women are neglected and abandoned. This is not just a physical war, but also an emotional one for many women in persecuted countries in Africa. I spoke to you about the community of Christians we met, and one of the women who took the floor to speak, this was her cry, look at our children, what future for them.

Sometimes the children get caught in the violence, they get killed. In the DRC, we have had many children experience that. Now, the ones who do not get killed, some get injured because maybe they got a bullet wound or they fell when they were running away.

We have that. We have cases of children who are traumatised, of course, some having to live without their parents or having experienced the brutal killing of their parents. It’s not easy to take away those images.

Besides that, you also have the children who find themselves parents at a young age. Maybe you are an elder sibling of 17 years old and you have five, six, seven siblings to take care of because one of your parents has been killed and the other has gone off to look for greener pastures to maybe take care of you, but then you find yourself having to drop off school, having to look for odd jobs because you have younger siblings who look up to you. Those are everyday experiences which we see.

Of course, there are many children also in camps for displaced persons who live under despicable conditions in cramped huts, no food, no clothing, no proper shelter, no access to schools because when you’re displaced, the immediate need is how to eat, where to sleep, not so much to go to school because the situation is as chaotic as it can be. This other case of a woman kidnapped alongside six children and she managed to flee with just two and four others remain in captivity. She doesn’t know where they are.

She hopes that they will be saved, but right until today, she doesn’t have news about them. So you have families also who have to live with this burden, with this grief, sometimes also with the guilt. Imagine you’re running with your child and maybe by some… You’re running for safety and your child falls and you don’t have time to turn back and your child gets killed or you never know the whereabouts of that child.

You have to live with that pain. It’s many things to live with. In this Arise Africa podcast, we have heard how women and children are facing challenges in persecuted countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.

But now what? What do we do? Where can we turn to? The Lord can use the obedient actions such as prayers for the persecuted church in turning this situation around. We believe God can use whoever is willing to stand in the gap. Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa face violent persecution on a scale never seen before.

They are calling on us to stand with them against this persecution. Will you stand with your persecuted brothers and sisters today? The Bible says the fervent prayers of a righteous man avails much, meaning a passionate, sincere prayer from a person living according to God’s will has great power and produces significant results. Amore shares how you can take action.

It’s not just an attack. It’s an attack against a particular group. So it’s important to get awareness because this awareness will drive every other action that is taken for these Christians, be it advocacy within our local churches or within the groups.

We can share about these experiences, but if we do not know what is happening properly, then we will not share properly. So yes, we can pray. We can get awareness.

We can advocate in our local environments. And according to where we find ourselves, we can also support other practical initiatives that are being undertaken to support these Christians. Like the Arise Africa campaign says, I really like how it puts it.

It stops the violence and starts the healing because healing is a process. You know, when you even check the grief curve, sometimes you are there and you come back. And we’ve experienced this several times on the field with the persecuted Christians that we meet.

We just want to help them to start the healing. And starting, like they say, the journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. And one of the first ways to help them to start the healing is to be with them, for them to understand that they are not alone, that there are people who hear them, who listen to them, who care about them.

And that’s very important. It goes a long way because I spoke about the Lady Marie. She says because of the rejection from her husband, her children, the mockery from the community, she has decided to live in the farm where she has a hut.

She prefers to stay there, she doesn’t want to have contact with people. She just lives on the Sunday to go to church, even though she’s being mocked there. So for some of these women, they need an ear to listen to them.

And so when we meet them on the field, we tell them, we are here to hear you. We are here to listen to you. Tell us everything.

And after listening to them, we pray with them, we encourage them. Because in some of these cases, what you can do is just to give them a hug and pray with them and pray for them. Let them know that there is someone who carries their burden with them.

And we trust God. We know that God can give peace to troubled hearts. We know that God can speak peace to the stone.

And he can speak peace to the stone that is raging in their heart. So we tell them, we know you have pain, you feel this pain. Take the pain to God.

He does not expect you to come to him with smiling faces. No, he’s waiting for you to come to him with the pain, with the burden. And just trust him.

He’s there to listen to you. And so we journey with them alongside that. And we’ve seen it has really helped because in many of the cases, what can you do if it’s not first to pray? Like the lady I spoke about, her four children remain in captivity.

She tells you, send prayers to where my children are. I pray to God and he made a way for me to flee. He can also make a way for my children to flee.

For such a woman, you give her 1 million, it doesn’t help her. Even if you build a big house for her, it doesn’t help her. Her biggest pain is her children who have remained in captivity.

And what you can do at that time is to tell her, you understand, you stand with her. You send prayers to where her children are. And God works in similar ways.

And he has answered prayers. He has answered prayers. So we stay with them, we hear them, we listen to them, we pray with them.

Our brother Ilya helps us also to take action and stand in the gap for the persecuted today by signing the petition, praying and sharing this initiative. What can we do to mobilise? We have a petition to sign the petition to raise awareness so the church members and others can sign that petition. So we don’t accept that.

To take action, not keep quiet, but also how can we put pressure on our government, local MPs, so that they can understand, they can take position, eventually to put the pressure on the government to stand on that and eventually to ask for protection for the government of all these countries. Some are trying, but what we observe, generally speaking, is not enough. People are feeling alone, abandoned and isolated and vulnerable to attacks and killings.

That’s true in Northern Cameroon, that’s true in Eastern DRC, that’s true elsewhere. So we need to pay attention and we need to stand and support the persecuted ones. Dear friends, thank you so much for tuning in to the Arise Africa podcast.

Your willingness to listen and engage with the urgent issues facing Christians in Africa is truly appreciated. Together we can amplify their voices and bring attention to their plight. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to take a moment to sign the Arise Africa petition.

Your support can make a significant difference in advocating for freedom and protection for those who are suffering. Join us in standing up for faith and freedom by signing the petition in the link below. Thank you for your compassion and commitment to this important cause.

Transcribed by TurboScribe.