geneva
AP
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An October “campaign of destruction” by Sudanese rebels against non-Arab communities in and around cities in Sudan’s western Darfur region exhibits “characteristics of genocide,” UN-backed human rights experts reported Thursday, a dramatic finding in the country’s devastating war.
The Independent Fact-Finding Mission on Sudan reported that rapid support forces committed mass killings and other atrocities in El Fasher after an 18-month siege, during which they imposed conditions “calculated to cause physical destruction” on non-Arab communities, particularly the Zaghawa and Fur communities.
United Nations officials say RSF has taken control of El Fasher, the only remaining Sudanese military stronghold in Darfur, killing thousands of civilians. Only 40% of the city’s 260,000 residents escaped the onslaught alive, with thousands of them injured, city officials said. The fate of the remaining people remains unknown.
Sudan entered conflict in mid-April 2023, when long-simmering tensions between the military and militia leaders erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including Darfur.
The devastating war has killed more than 40,000 people, according to United Nations figures, but aid groups say this is an underestimate and the real number could be many times higher.
The RSF and its allies, an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, overran El Fasher on October 26 and rampaged through the city. The offensive was marked by widespread brutality, including mass killings, summary executions, sexual violence, torture and kidnappings for ransom, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office.
The office said more than 6,000 people were killed in the city between October 25 and October 27. Prior to the attack, rebels said they had rioted in the Abshok camp on the outskirts of the city, killing at least 300 people over two days.
RSF did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The group’s commander, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, previously acknowledged abuses by the fighters, but disputed the scale of the atrocities.
The international treaty, known colloquially as the Genocide Convention, was adopted in 1948, three years after the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and sets out five criteria for assessing whether genocide has occurred.
It’s about killing members of the group. Causing serious physical or mental harm to members. Imposing measures aimed at preventing births within the population. Inflicting conditions deliberately calculated to bring about “physical destruction” on a group. Then they forcibly transfer those children to another group.
The fact-finding team, which does not have final say on the matter, said it found that at least three of these five cases were met by RSF actions. Under this convention, even if only one of the five conditions is met, it can still be recognized as genocide.
RSF actions in El Fasher included the killing of members of protected ethnic groups. Causing serious physical and psychological harm. According to the fact-finding team, the intentional infliction of living conditions calculated to result in the total or partial physical destruction of a group of people are all core elements of the crime of genocide under international law.
The report cited a systematic pattern of ethnically targeted killings, sexual violence, and destruction, as well as public statements explicitly calling for the exclusion of non-Arab communities.
Excessive war is ‘not random’, says chairman
Mohamed Chande Osman, the team chairman and former Chief Justice of Tanzania, said the RSF operation was not an “excessive war” but a planned and systematic operation with the characteristics of genocide.
The team’s report said El Fasher’s residents were “physically exhausted and malnourished, with some unable to flee and vulnerable to the extreme violence that followed.” “Thousands of people, especially the Zaghawa people, were killed, raped or disappeared during three days of absolute terror.”
The fact-finding mission noted mass killings, widespread rape, sexual violence, torture and cruel treatment, arbitrary detention, extortion, and enforced disappearances during the RSF’s occupation of El Fasher in late October.
The report documents instances in which survivors quoted fighters as saying things like, “Are there any Zaghawa among you? If we find any Zaghawa, we will kill them all,” and “We want to eliminate black people from Darfur.”
The report noted that women and girls from the Zaghawa and Far ethnic groups were “selectively targeted,” while “women identified as Arab were often with impunity.”
The fact-finding team was created in 2023 by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, the UN’s main human rights body. The Human Rights Council is made up of 47 countries selected from among the members of the world body.
The team called for accountability for perpetrators and warned that protection of civilians was needed “now more than ever” as the conflict spread to other parts of Sudan.
During the course of the conflict, the belligerent parties were accused of violating international law. However, most of the atrocities were blamed on the RSF. In one of its last decisions, the Biden administration said it had committed genocide in Darfur.
The RSF has received support from the United Arab Emirates during the war, according to UN experts and rights groups. The UAE denies the allegations.
RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militia. The Janjaweed militia gained notoriety for brutality in Darfur in the early 2000s with its ruthless campaign against people who identify as East or Central Africans. The operation left around 300,000 people dead and 2.7 million displaced.
