Sudan killings a continuation of genocide, say activists

Human rights and aid activists have described the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killings in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher as a “continuation of the Darfur genocide“, as reported by the BBC and agencies on October 30th.

El-Fasher is the state capital of Sudan’s western Darfur region, and was captured by the paramilitary RSF, as reported on October 26th, after the city had been under an RSF-imposed siege. The city’s capture led to field executions, including the assassination of a former Justice and Liberation Party MP, Siham Hassan, who had stayed in the city to help her community.

A UN official has warned that the risk of genocide occurring in Darfur was “very high” amid accusations that the RSF was carrying out ethnically-motivated violence, particularly in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

Additionally, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have revealed that war crimes were being committed in the South Darfur region.

According to the ICC’s deputy prosecutor, Nazhat Shameem Khan, “hospitals, humanitarian convoys, and other civilian objects are apparently being targeted. Famine is escalating, and humanitarian aid is not reaching those in dire need of it.”

It was reported on October 30th that 460 patients were shot dead at Sudan’s last functioning hospital in El-Fasher; intensifying drone strikes against mosques, displaced person shelters and refugee camps have forced people to seek refuge in underground bunkers.

The UAE-funded RSF is viewed as the successor of the Janjaweed (“Devils on Horseback”) militia, which perpetrated genocide against ethnic Africans in Darfur between April 2003 and March 2004. The Janjaweed militia was accused of carrying out multiple crimes against humanity, including rape, torture, deliberate targeting of civilians, and forced displacement.

The 2003 genocide was triggered when the Janjaweed were sent by the government to suppress an uprising by ethnic Africans against the oppressive Arab Sudanese government. An estimated 300,000 people were killed in the conflict, and a further 2.5 million were displaced.

The civil war between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) began in April 2023, and at least 40,000 people have been killed in the last two years. Out of the country’s 50 million inhabitants, 26 million are facing hunger due to food shortages.

Researchers at Yale University’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) revealed that the RSF had constructed walls around El-Fasher, essentially locking the population in what the HRL described as a “literal killbox.” The RSF have also blocked access to all humanitarian corridors leading to the besieged city, forcing community kitchens to close as food supplies ran out.

BBC and agencies, Human Rights Watch, Maghrebi.org