El Geneina: Murder, Rape and Slavery 

News Analysis

By: Mohammed Wadaa

A shocking report by the Washington Post about the Janjaweed enslaving the population in El Geneina

Abducting, detaining and raping women in homes in Khartoum and El Geneina

The militia demands a ransom to release the abducted and arrests them again

The price of the girl is about $500, and the ransom for her release is $330

A Washington Post report from El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, has revealed the scale of crimes committed by the Rapid Support militia (RSF) in Darfur. The report said, according to an unpublished United Nations investigation reviewed by the newspaper and based on the testimony of one of the survivors of the killing, called Musa, that he and his friends were able to survive life to use them as workers in the RSF Service. The fighters pulled them from their hideouts, scolded them, and called them “slaves.” Musa, who was interviewed in a refugee camp in Chad like the others mentioned in this story, recalls that the RSF fighter said: Get out, you slaves. One of my friends was killed with an axe. …We were beaten with whips. Musa said he was taken to another house, where there were six bodies lying outside. They ordered him to work repairing cars. His captors told another RSF soldier that Musa’s group would be killed when they were finished. In the end, they were beaten and forced to work on farms. Adam Hamed, 24, who said he survived a mass execution in El Geneina, was also transferred to Ibn Sina prison. The militia abducted civilians for ransom or forced them into forced slavery, according to ten victims who have since been released. Then, the victims, other witnesses and activists said that elements of the RS, which seized most of the capital, Khartoum, and invaded most of the western Darfur region, made these abductions a lucrative source of income.

Some victims said that they were enslaved and sold to work on the farms of the leaders of the RSF. Others narrated that they were detained while their families were forced to pay ransom for them. Some victims said that they were seized several times. Witnesses and activists said that among those abducted were girls and young women who were tied up and sold as (Slave) sex, and most of the survivors who provided testimonies are from the Masalit tribe, in addition to the presence of abducted from other tribes. Some of the abducted were released in exchange for a ransom of about $330, said Khamisa Zakaria Abdel-Banat, 37 years old, who went to search for her missing son outside El Geneina was unsuccessful. Instead, they found two boys from the Masalit ethnic group working as servants for the local mayor’s sister. One of them, 15, said he was part of a group of 17 Masalit people, divided among militia leaders and forced to work as domestic servants, two per family. Fatima Ishaq, 40, said that the RSF killed her 17-year-old son when they raided her home in Ardamata and that her youngest daughter, 15, was kidnapped as she tried to flee. She paid about $80 for his freedom. But his captor handed him over to another fighter, who ordered her to pay again. She had to pay three times, and in the end, one of the RSF fighters told her that he would keep her son enslaved to carry the looted goods, but he would not kill him. She said he was still missing, and says several witnesses and activists said they had also seen captive young women sold in Darfur. A resident of Kabkabiya in North Darfur said he heard two RSF fighters in the market discussing the sale of two girls. In October, he struck up a conversation, and the fighters took him to see two women, both of whom were ages 18 and 22, locked in a house. The RSF soldiers demanded about $1,000 for the two girls. A local resident said that he bargained with them for half of this amount and took them home. Out of compassion, he released the women and sent them to search for their families.

Salima Ishaq, head of the Unit for Combating Violence against Women in the Sudanese Ministry of Social Development, said that girls and young women are being sold openly in Darfur. Ishaq said that her unit tracked abducted girls in several regions, including Darfur, Khartoum and other places, and said, “They were seen by eyewitnesses tied up, chained in cars.”

The report says that there are more than 13 women missing from their area in Bahri, in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, since November, and two of them returned with accounts of sexual violence. One of them reported that RSF fighters detained her for five days and raped her. The other woman told the committee that she was detained in Khartoum near the airport, with about 50 other women in a residential building now used to detain women for rape. The Strategic Initiative said it confirmed that RSF fighters brought three women to the city of El Fasher in North Darfur, and when civilians demanded their release, RSF soldiers demanded them to pay a ransom of about $5,000 and provided phones to call their families, who eventually paid about two-thirds of this amount.

Violations report to be continued.

February 25, 2024