UN Says RSF and SAF Commit Abuses in Sudan: Non-Arabs Killed by RSF
Kanako Mita, Sawako Utsumi, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
The United Nations (UN) singled out the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allies for committing horrendous crimes against non-Arabs. It is known that non-Arab Masalits were especially singled out in Darfur (other non-Arab groups targeted).
One fact-finding expert (Mona Rishwami) stipulated that the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had both committed horrendous crimes against the civilian population.
Rishwami said, “We found that there are reasonable grounds to believe that both SAF and RSF and their respective allies have committed the war crimes of violence against life and persons, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture, and committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliation and degrading treatment.”
Investigators said RSF and fellow allies committed “horrific assaults” against non-Arabs. They especially mentioned Arabs butchering and raping Masalits in Darfur.
The investigators uttered that the persecution of the Masalits by Arabs included “killings, torture, rape and other forms of sexual violence, destruction of property and pillage.”
The report highlights the shocking degradation of children in this mainly Muslim nation. It says children have been “killed, injured, forcibly displaced, detained with adults, tortured, subjected to sexual violence and deprived of healthcare and education.”
Joy Ngozi Ezeilo (fact-finding expert), while acknowledging crimes committed by SAF forces, singled out the RSF for crimes committed in Darfur and the environs of Khartoum.
Ezeilo said, “Victims recounted being attacked in their homes, beaten, lashed and threatened with death or harm to their relatives or children before being raped by more than one perpetrator,” she said. “They were also subjected to sexual violence while seeking shelter from attack or fleeing.”
The report highlighted notable crimes committed by the RSF (and allies). Hence, the fact-finding report said the RSF and allies “committed the additional war crimes of rape, sexual slavery, and pillage, as well as ordering the displacement of the civilian population and the recruitment of children below 15 in hostilities.”
James Elder, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said one senior medical worker informed him that he had “direct contact with hundreds, hundreds of women and girls, some as young as eight years old, who have been raped. Many have been held captive for weeks on end.”
The Guardian reports, “The violence in El Geneina and Ardamata has drawn parallels with the genocide of the mid-2000s, when Kalashnikov-wielding Arab militias called the Janjaweed crushed a rebellion by African groups in Darfur, killing an estimated 300,000. The RSF emerged out of the Janjaweed.”
Mohamed Chande Othman (Chairperson of the fact-finding mission) called “…for the deployment of an independent, impartial force to protect civilians in the country.”
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