ROMA – The crimes committed in Darfur are among the worst atrocities committed in the current conflict in Sudan. The total number of deaths is unknown. Sudanese Red Crescent staff say they counted two thousand bodies in the streets of El Geneina until June 13 and then, overwhelmed by the numbers, stopped counting. The UN panel estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in El Geneina in 2023. A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) provides a detailed account of how the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) together with their allies have committed numerous and serious violations of international humanitarian law and human rights as part of the campaign carried out against the ethnic Massalit people residing in El Geneina. The work is based on over 220 interviews, on the analysis of 110 photographs, videos, satellite images and documents shared by humanitarian organizations. Between April and November 2023, researchers interviewed displaced people from El Geneina during six trips to Chad, Kenya, Uganda and South Sudan.
The news. On 24 April 2023, the RSF and allies attacked the Massalit-majority neighborhoods of El Geneina. In the following weeks, the RSF systematically targeted civilians, killing large numbers of them, including teenagers, children, women and prominent figures: lawyers, doctors, human rights defenders, academics, community leaders, religious figures and officials. of the local government. Women were raped and detainees were tortured. The RSF and allied militias destroyed civilian infrastructure, looted on a large scale and burned, bombed and razed entire neighborhoods, including schools, transformed into places of reception for displaced Massalit people. Thousands of civilians, mostly men and boys, but also younger children, elderly people and women, were killed in less than two months and thousands more were injured. A mortality survey conducted by Doctors Without Borders in three refugee camps in eastern Chad it documents 167 violent deaths in the families of 6,918 people living in El Geneina, or 241 deaths per 10,000 people: a 23-fold increase in the average male mortality rate and an 11-fold increase in the average female mortality rate .
Ali’s story. On the morning of 15 June 2023, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked a medical clinic set up for emergencies in El Geneina, where 25 patients were admitted for treatment. “They started shooting at us and killed everyone except me and a woman, who was also injured. They hit me on her right arm. I collapsed, pretending to be dead,” says Ali, who was in the facility. Ali and the woman remained in the clinic, surrounded by the corpses of patients and health workers, for ten hours, while the RSF continued to assault the city. Around 5pm another group of seven armed men in uniform entered the hospital. “A fighter saw that I was still alive, he approached me and started hitting me on my broken leg,” Ali recalls. “Please stop – I told him – just kill me!”, but he replied: “I don’t want to kill you, I want to torture you!”. Ali was rescued by his family a few hours later, when the RSF had left the clinic. From late April to early November 2023, the RSF and allied militias carried out a systematic campaign to drive away or kill ethnic Massalit residents, like Ali, from El Geneina. The violence began on April 24 and continued on and off, peaking in mid-June and November. The massacre that Ali survived is just one episode in a long series of atrocities that the RSF and allied militias, predominantly belonging to Darfur Arab groups, have carried out in El Geneina and West Darfur since the conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF on 15 April 2023.
Shooting at fleeing civilians. The governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abbakar, was also killed on June 14. His murder led to a mass exodus from El Geneina. Some civilians fled westwards towards Chad. Others fled to Ardamata, a suburb north of El Geneina that is home to an SAF garrison, but were attacked by the RSF while fleeing. “My mother was pushing me in a wheelbarrow,” says Malik, a 17-year-old boy, already injured, fleeing towards Ardamata. Malik saw RSF forces kill at least 12 young children, including infants, three men and two women. “Two RSF soldiers took the children away from their parents and, when they started screaming, two other men shot the parents and killed them. Then they also killed the children and threw their bodies into the river.” The killings continued in the following days both in El Geneina and on the road to Chad, where tens of thousands of people and many Massalit fighters were going to seek protection.
The numbers. The United Nations documents that in early November, almost five months after the June 15 massacre, the RSF and allied militias killed another thousand civilians in the suburb of Ardamata. The soldiers also ransacked homes, attacked and illegally detained dozens of people, mainly Massalit. Over 570,000 civilians, predominantly Massalit, are now in refugee camps in Chad, with little hope of returning home in the near future.
War crimes and crimes against humanity. Many abuses committed by the RSF and allied militias documented in the HRW report constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. Targeting Massalit and other non-Arab communities is a form of ethnic cleansing. In July 2023, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office said it would launch investigations into recent abuses in Darfur. The UN Human Rights Council established an independent international fact-finding mission for Sudan, but its investigation was significantly delayed by a cash crisis at the UN. Meanwhile, the humanitarian response in Chad is vastly underfunded and struggles to provide adequate support to the needs of one of the largest displaced populations in the world. Over 88 percent of refugees are women and children.
#Darfur #horrors #war #broke #year #caused #crisis #displaced #people #refugees #world
– 2024-05-09 14:21:32
