A new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), accuses the RSF of possible “genocide” and “crimes against humanity,” for a number of attacks last year in West Darfur.
Basing the allegations against RSF on personal accounts, Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, senior researcher for HRW and also co-author of the new report, said the attacks were mostly against the Masalit group in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.
“People described how the RSF and allied militias beginning in late April carried out relentless waves of attacks against Masalit neighborhoods of El-Geneina,” said Gallopin. He said while there were some reported clashes between the RSF and Masalit armed groups, the RSF “also targeted the civilian population of these neighborhoods as a whole.” The forces also targeted sites hosting displaced people, Gallopin told VOA.
The report, conducted over a ten-month period, was based on interviews by HRW researchers with more than 225 survivors and witnesses from El-Geneina residing now in Chad, Kenya, South Sudan and other areas, whose allegations against the RSF included “widespread killings as well as other severe abuses such as rape and torture and looting,” said Gallopin.
“We spent a lot of time in the camps in Chad where, you know, the totality of Masalit from El-Geneina fled in June and July and August,” Gallopin told VOA, adding, “it’s rare when you speak to multiple people in camps who said they witnessed large-scale killings and children who have been shot deliberately by forces.”
Among the victims Gallopin said HRW spoke to was a 17-year-old boy who was shot and injured in June and told researchers “how he saw twelve children and five parents being rounded up and killed by the RSF.”
The 186-page report describes “an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Masalit and other non-Arab populations.”
Satellite imagery showed that since June, mostly Masalit neighborhoods in El-Geneina have been “systematically dismantled, many with bulldozers, preventing civilians from returning to their homes,” HRW reported.
According to HRW, by late October, more than half-a-million Sudanese had fled the fighting in Darfur, with three quarters of the people crossing the border from Darfur into Chad coming from El-Geneina.
The United States has warned of a disaster of “epic proportions” if the RSF proceeds with an expected attack on El-Fasher in North Darfur, the only state capital not under RSF control.
VOA was not able to get any response from the RSF on the HRW allegations.
However, asked about previous RSF denials of taking part in alleged atrocities against ethnic communities in Darfur, Gallopin told VOA, “the line of the RSF last year was that there was no violence and they had nothing to do with this - just tribal conflict. That goes in direct opposition with the fact that we’ve established the presence of the RSF as a key actor in these attacks, recognizable by their uniforms, vehicles and artillery.
Some information in this report came from AFP.