Why Is the United Nations Anti-Christian?

[Editor’s Note: Portions of this article were printed earlier, but they bear repeating]

The missionaries of Frontline Fellowship understand that discomfort, diseases, delays and dangers are part of our job description. Evangelizing as we do in war zones and assisting persecuted churches we expect opposition—from Communist forces. Islamic governments and witchdoctors. However, we have often found the United Nations Organization to be an even greater enemy of the gospel.

Blockading Southern Angola

For our missionaries to deliver humanitarian relief aid to people in Southern Angola we need to evade shoot-on-sight patrols and cross crocodile-infested rivers—in violation of international law! What is even more scandalous is that while Western governments have been selling weapons of mass destruction (such as napalm fuel-air bombs) to the Marxist MPLA government, they have imposed total economic sanctions on the Christians in the south of Angola. Over the past four years, not even medical aid has been allowed to the Unita-controlled south.

On numerous occasions our Frontline Fellowship mission teams have managed to evade the military patrols and roadblocks, breach the blockade, by-pass the minefields and cross the rivers and swamps in order to deliver the desperately needed shipments of medicines. Bibles and relief aid. All the hospitals and clinics we have supplied in Cuando Cubango province have shown us empty dispensaries. They each reported that our mission was the only source of medicines and equipment that they had received over the past four years.

Many thousands of precious people have died needlessly—just because of the international United Nations sanctions placed upon their part of the country. More quinine would have spared thousands from malaria. More antibiotics would have saved the lives of thousands who have died of infection. Our mission has smuggled in eleven truck loads of Bibles, relief aid and medicine. The cost has been one vehicle written off, one team arrested and imprisoned and one of our missionaries, Anthony Duncan, killed in the service of Christ. On one field outreach to Angola, Namibian military patrols shot at and wounded others crossing the border. How many more innocent people are going to suffer and die before the UN lifts this senseless blockade?

We need to love our neighbors—including the many widows and orphans in Angola. The terrain and climate are harsh and the infrastructure has been so destroyed that it is hard enough for any relief workers and missionaries to operate in this war-devastated region without the murderous UN blockade.

Their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes. (Rom. 3-13-18)

Banning Bibles in Sudan

Many Sudanese Christians complain to us about the UN bias against Christians. The ban on Bibles being transported into Sudan was the most offensive, but they also mentioned many occasions when church-related relief flights were cancelled. “As Christians, we are lower than third-class citizens in the eyes of the UN”: Christian organizations such as new Sudan Council of Churches and ACROSS have even been banned hy the UN/OLS from having any relief flights for a month—simply for attempting to take Bibles into Sudan!

The UN also banned all new Sudan Council of Churches relief flights because one of their ministers attempted to take on board a box of communion wafers for the Eucharist/ Lord’s Supper celebrations for churches in Sudan! Yet that same flight took in beer and wine for UN officials! Other missionaries complained of UN interference forbidding them to take in crosses, Sunday School pictures, and other religious materials. One missionary couple reported how UN officials had forbidden the showing of the Jesus film in Nuer at Ulang. The SPLA (Sudanese Peoples Liberation Army) Commander insisted on the Jesus film being screened to his people—despite the protests of the UN. The same couple remarked at how inconsistent the UN’s position on religion was. In Cambodia, the UN had erected a Buddhist Temple for the refugees (because “that is their religion”). Yet in Southern Sudan they discriminate against the Christian faith of the population. As one pastor put it: “It’s not that the UN is against religion; they’re just against Christianity.”

Several of our missionaries, including myself, have had numerous flights arbitrarily cancelled by the UN. Our Deputy Director even had a flight ban slapped on him for challenging a UN official concerning their anti-Christian bias!

It is also a shocking fact that the Nuba Mountains—which have been the site of the worst atrocities and home to the most desperately needy people in Sudan—have been completely excluded from the Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) relief program. Frontline missionaries have actually been threatened hy UN officials that any non-UN-authorized flights would be shot down by the Government of Sudan (GOS) helicopter gunships and jet fighters stationed at Juha.

Officers in the SPLA also had their own critical observations: “Under the guise of feeding the starving and suffering Sudanese civilians, the UN is actually sustaining the Muslim garrison towns.” As another put it: “There is a great imbalance. Many more UN planes—and bigger aircraft—fly to the Muslim garrison towns each day than to SPLA held towns. This is how they are maintaining 100,000 Arab troops in the South—the UN is feeding them!” (He also pointed out that the reported flight schedules were deceptive, since flights to Christian towns were routinely cancelled.)

A civilian observer put it even more bluntly: “The UN is providing the Government of Sudan with an efficient air force. The UN is effectively serving as the logistical support arm of the GOS troops in the South. In this way they are actually prolonging this war”

Several pastors and NGOs confirmed that the GOS troops in Juba and Wan, for example, had complete control of all relief aid being flown in by the OLS. They maintained that refugees fleeing from these towns report mass starvation while the GOS troops requisition the relief aid. Those civilians who wanted any part of the food aid were forced to convert to Islam. We received multiple testimonies of the abuse of relief aid in Muslim controlled areas. Food aid has routinely been abused as a weapon for enforced Islamization and Arabization. Not only are recipients forced to beg for the food “in the name of Allah” and recite the Islamic creed, but they are required to change their Christian names to Arabic names!

Those nations and organizations which are funding aspects of the UN’s Operation Lifeline Sudan should institute a thorough investigation into these accusations of corruption, waste, anti-Christian bias, mismanagement of resources and the abuse of relief aid by Government of Sudan forces:

The way of peace they do not know, there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no one who walks in them will know peace. (Is. 59:8)

The Holocaust in Rwanda

The people of Rwanda still find it very hard to accept that over 2,500 UN troops stood by and failed to take any action to intervene and prevent the slaughter of tens of thousands of unarmed Tutsi before their very eyes. Even those thousands of refugees who had sought protection from the UN were abandoned. At the strongly fortified UN base at Ecole Technique Official (ETO) in Kigali, the Belgian troops tried to deceive the refugees hy assembling them for a meal in the dining room and then evacuated the base while the refugees were eating. Literally two minutes after the Belgians had driven out of their base the Hutu Presidential Guards poured into the buildings annihilating The defenseless Tutsi refugees. As they arrived in Belgium, some soldiers slashed their blue berets in disgust.

One of the survivors of the massacre at the UN ETO base, Jean-Paul expressed his bitter disillusionment with the UN: “We wonder what on earth UNAMIR was doing in Rwanda. They could not even lift a finger to intervene and prevent the death of tens of thousands of innocent people who were being killed under their very noses. We were there, they were there, and they could see what was happening in Rwanda. But the UN protects no-one. They had been sent to Kigali to assure the security of Kigali. What about the people of Kigali? How can they protect the security of Kigali when they are doing nothing to protect its people? The most shameful cover-up was to say that people were being killed because there was a war between government forces and the RPF and to say that the two sides could not agree on the terms of a cease fire. We saw this as a pretext to justify the withdrawal. That’s all. People were dying in large-scale massacres in places like Butare, Cyangugu and Kibuye, which had seen no battles whatsoever. And UNAMIR knew this perfectly well.”

If you falter in times of trouble, how small is your strength! Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter. If you say! “But we knew nothing about this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who guards your life know it? Will He not repay each person according to what he has done?

(Prov. 24:10 12)