Sudan conflict: HRW says genocide committed in Darfur

A genocide may have taken place in the West Darfur city of El Geneina, making it one of the worst atrocities in Sudan’s year-long civil war, according to a report published by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report said ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity were committed against the city’s Masalit and non-Arab communities by the militia’s Rapid Support Forces and their Arab allies.

The report calls for sanctions against those responsible for the atrocities, including RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as Hemedi.

The United Nations says around 15,000 people are feared to have been killed in Ergeneina last year.

Warning: This article contains details that some readers may find disturbing

The HRW report documents evidence of a systematic operation by the RSF and its allied militias to remove Masalit residents from Ergeneina.

Witnesses described how the RSF rounded up and shot dead men, women, and children who were fleeing ethnic violence in rebel cities.

The 218-page report said at least “thousands” of people were killed between April and November 2023, leaving “hundreds of thousands” as refugees.

It added: “This incident is one of the worst atrocities against civilians so far in Sudan’s current conflict.”

The BBC spoke to people in Ergeneina who say they are victims of ethnic violence.

One man said he joined others who had fled to a central meeting place after their bases were attacked in different parts of the city. He said the RSF had a base nearby and eventually began bombing the Mudaris area with heavy artillery.

“We buried all the dead at night. One day there were 186 people, another day there were 80 people, another day there were 50 people,” he said.

The man, who asked to remain anonymous, has now taken refuge in neighboring Chad.

He told the BBC that the gunmen raped his wife, using degrading language. You will be our wife’s servant and clean our house. ”

According to the HRW report, RSF fighters and militias used derogatory racial slurs against Masalit and other ethnic groups, calling the land not theirs but “the land of the Arabs”. It is said that he told them that it would be.

The attack culminated in a large-scale massacre on June 15 last year, when the RSF and its allies opened fire on a convoy of civilians desperately trying to flee, the paper said.

A 17-year-old boy described to HRW the circumstances in which 12 children and five adults from several families were killed:[ed] When the children were separated from their parents and the parents started screaming, two other RSF troops shot them dead. Then they shot the children one on top of the other. They threw their bodies into the river and their belongings after them. ”

The current violence stems from a long history of tensions over resources between non-Arab farming communities, including Masalit, and Arab pastoralist communities.

These tensions were exploited by the former government of Omar al-Bashir. In the 2000s, he created an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed to suppress the Masalit rebellion, from which the RSF was eventually formed. Many of those who fled Janjaweed attacks 20 years ago had taken refuge in the internally displaced persons camp in Ergeneina.

Sudan’s civil war has reignited ethnic violence. The conflict began as a power struggle between Sudanese military leader General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and General Hemedi of the RSF militia, but has since involved other ethnic militias.

General Hemedi denied that the fighters intentionally attacked civilians.

However, HRW said he was one of the people responsible for commanding the forces that carried out the atrocities.

HRW researchers interviewed more than 220 Sudanese refugees between June 2023 and April 2024 in Chad, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, and in remote locations.

They also examined and analyzed more than 120 photos and videos of the incident, satellite images, and documents shared by humanitarian organizations to corroborate their accounts of abuse.

Human rights groups called for further investigation to determine whether there was an intention to eliminate the Masalit community, which suggests genocide.

Prosecutors from the United States and the International Criminal Court have discussed war crimes in Darfur, but have not specifically mentioned genocide.

RSF says it is not involved in what it calls “tribal conflict” in Darfur.