conflicts
UN Human Rights Office: 87 dead in mass grave in Sudan
A militia officer sits next to military equipment said to have been looted during a skirmish in the contested area in south Darfur. photo
© picture alliance / dpa
In Sudan, the two military blocs of the army and the RSF militia are inexorably opposed. According to the UN, three million people are on the run. Old conflicts erupt brutally in the Darfur region.
In the power struggle that has been going on for almost three months in According to UN information, there are serious human rights violations and war crimes in the Darfur region between the army and the RSF militia. In a statement published on Thursday, the UN Human Rights Office accuses the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of killing at least 87 people, including 14 women and children, and burying them in a mass grave.
“I condemn in the strongest terms the killing of civilians and I am also appalled at the callous and disrespectful way in which the dead and their families and communities have been treated,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk on Thursday.
For months, the President and Vice President have been fighting a long-simmering power struggle. The army is fighting against former Vice President Mohammed Hamdan Daglo’s RSF militia. President Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Daglo ended the long-term rule of dictator Omar al-Bashir together in 2019. However, both delayed the promised transition to democracy.
Victims belong to ethnic minorities
According to the UN Human Rights Office, people were killed between June 13 and 21 in Al-Junaina, the capital of West Darfur state. The victims belong to the Masalit ethnic minority.
The office relied on reports from relatives of the victims. On June 14, the governor of West Darfur was arrested and executed by the RSF, according to UN information. In an earlier interview, he criticized the killing of civilians in the region and asked the international community for help. As a result of the execution, violence erupted again in West Darfur.
The human rights organization Human Rights Watch also warned at the beginning of the week of a further escalation of violence in Darfur. The killing of civilians by the RSF should be investigated by the International Criminal Court as a war crime, the organization said in its report.
One of the country’s most serious conflicts has been raging in Darfur for 20 years. The Arab-born central government oppresses the ethnic minorities in the west of the country. The RSF play a central role in this, having already been responsible for ethnic cleansing in the region in the service of the government of the former dictator Al-Bashir. Even the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force was unable to stabilize the region in the long term. Darfur is still considered a stronghold of the RSF. The conflicts between ethnic minorities in the region, such as the Masalit and the RSF, which have been smoldering for decades, have now escalated again as a result of the power struggle.