War in Sudan, the report: paramilitaries carry out ethnic cleansing in Darfur

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The threat of a already seen had already emerged. Now it’s explicit. A report by the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch accuses the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the group at war for over a year against the regular Sudanese army, of having killed “at least” thousands of people and having provoked hundreds of thousands of displaced people in their attacks between April and November 2023. The attacks were concentrated near the city of Geneina, in western Darfur, one of the branches of the conflict that has dragged on for over a year in the third largest African country.

The war crimes and crimes against humanity attributed to the paramilitaries, we read in the text shared with the Sun 24 Hours, were committed in the «context of an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit and other non-Arab populations near the city». A scenario already experienced in the conflict that bloodied the region at the beginning of the 2000s, starting from the executioners accused then and back in the spotlight today. The same RSF led by Mohamed Dagalo, known as “Hemetti”, are heirs of the militias Janjaweed who had already spread terror in the conflict a couple of decades ago.

Now they would have been guilty of atrocities identical to those reported in the first season of violence, in one of the bloodiest conflicts on an African and global scale. Over the first year of the war, which broke out on 15 April 2023 due to disagreements between General al-Burhan and Hemetti himself, the estimates on victims released by the Acled conflict database speak of almost 15 thousand victims. The toll of the humanitarian crisis is even more substantial: data updated to 5 May 2024 from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees record 8.8 million displaced people.

The details of the accusation of ethnic cleansing

The HRW report, entitled “The Masalit will not return home”, documents how RSF and allied militias “targeted” the vicinity of the city of Geneina between April and June 2023, attacking a population “predominantly” Masalit: an ethnic group who lives between Darfur and eastern Chad, classified as “African” by the Arab troops who populate the coalition between RSF and allies.

The violence intensified again in November, favoring migratory flows across the eastern border with Chad: not surprisingly, the outlet for over half a million refugees fleeing the violence of those who were known as the “devils on horseback” in first Darfur conflict. The attacks recorded and contested by HRW include torture, rape and looting, according to testimonies collected by the NGO from a sample that includes 220 people in Chad, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, as well as viewing over 120 photos and videos of the events, images satellites and documents shared by humanitarian organizations.