2023-12-06 22:25:33
– The United States speaks of “war crimes” in Sudan
Washington on Wednesday accused the two rival factions of having committed “war crimes” since the start of the war in Sudan in April.
Published today at 11:25 p.m.
More than 10,000 people were killed, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project. (Pretext image)
AFP
The United States on Wednesday accused the Sudanese armed forces and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), opposed in a devastating conflict for months, of having engaged in “war crimes”, without imposing new sanctions on them. immediate sanctions.
“I have established that members of the Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces have committed war crimes in Sudan,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. It “also accuses members of the RSF and allied militias of having committed crimes once morest humanity and acts of ethnic cleansing.”
The Sudanese army and its paramilitary rivals “must end this conflict now, comply with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, and bring to justice those responsible for atrocities,” adds Antony Blinken in the press release.
10,000 dead
Since April 15, forces loyal to army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, Sudan’s de facto head of state, have been at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by his former deputy, Mohamed Hamdane Daglo.
More than 10,000 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate by the Armed Conflict and Event Data Project, and the UN says 6.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes. The Sudanese army and the RSF “have sowed violence, death and destruction across Sudan,” adds Antony Blinken in the press release. “Civilians have borne the brunt of this unnecessary conflict,” he said.
Citing the case of the RSF and allied militias, they “terrorized women and girls with sexual violence, attacking them in their homes, kidnapping them in the street or targeting those who tried to flee to seek refuge. security,” he says. Acts which “echo”, he continues, to the war in Darfur twenty years ago which the United States described as “genocide”.
Terror
In the early 2000s, the Janjawids – who today form the bulk of the RSF troops – sowed terror in this region of western Sudan, acting on behalf of the leader at the time, Omar al-Bashir. Wednesday’s American announcement does not include new sanctions once morest Sudan, but State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller did not rule it out.
“The fact of not announcing sanctions today does not mean that we will not impose new measures later,” he said during a press briefing. The United States has so far taken a series of sanctions targeting, for example, a former foreign minister in the Bashir government or members of the FSR, but has been careful not to strike at the highest level. UN experts have recently reported widespread sexual violence in Sudan, sometimes motivated by ethnicity and used as “an instrument of war”.
The United States and Saudi Arabia sponsored a second round of negotiations in late October in the Saudi port city of Jeddah aimed at ending fighting between the rival factions, but these have stalled “neither side ‘being ready to keep its commitments’, according to Matthew Miller. Previous attempts at mediation have only resulted in brief truces, which have been systematically broken.
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