{"id":5129,"date":"2023-11-22T12:52:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T12:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=5129"},"modified":"2023-11-22T16:43:06","modified_gmt":"2023-11-22T16:43:06","slug":"sudan-genocide-going-on-in-darfur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2023\/11\/22\/sudan-genocide-going-on-in-darfur\/","title":{"rendered":"Sudan: Genocide going on in Darfur"},"content":{"rendered":"

Agencies – Sudan Events<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UN, independent researchers and charities all highlight the brutality of a conflict that has left 9,000 people dead and 5.6 million displaced in the past seven months.
\nRiding horses, camels and motorbikes, the paramilitaries arrived on the outskirts of Ardamata in early November. Sudan\u2019s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters took men from homes that they then burned down; at least 800 people were killed and survivors were ordered to bury the dead.
\nThe RSF went door-to-door in Ardamata, in west Darfur, according to the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, rounding up and killing people from the Masalit ethnic group.
\nInvestigators at the non-profit Centre for Information Resilience (CIR) have collated images from Ardamata that appear to confirm attacks on civilians. CIR\u2019s Sudan Witness project has been monitoring human rights violations in the region, which is closed to foreigners and journalists, using open-source information, satellite imagery and Nasa-provided data, as well as gathering images from social media that are geolocated.
\nThe Masalit have been targeted as supporters of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in the tensions and outbreaks of violence surrounding west Darfur\u2019s capital of El Geneina.
\nThe much-feared RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has been fighting SAF forces loyal to General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan since 15 April, when the two leaders began a tussle for power that again toppled Sudan into a civil war. The UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed and 5.6 million displaced in the past seven months.
\nThe RSF now holds four of the five Sudanese army bases in the Darfur region and took control of Nyala and Zalingei in October. Fighters have been accused of carrying out an ethnic massacre in El Geneina, where mass graves were identified in July. The town of Ardamata marks a further increase in RSF forces\u2019 control of the region.
\nCIR researchers have verified videos of militiamen rounding up and whipping men dressed in civilian clothing in Ardamata. One video shows men being struck with rifles by uniformed men, some of whom wore RSF insignia and called the men \u201csons of dogs\u201d.
\nThey killed every man they met in my neighbourhoods,\u201d says Ibrahim Abakar (not his real name), a 40-year-old Ardamata resident. \u201cI was praying when I heard the sound of an explosion. A shell killed my friends and nearly cut off my feet.\u201d
\nThe UN says at least 8,000 people fled Ardamata and crossed into Chad. Abakar is trying to reach Chad, but has been told he will have to pay 100,000 Sudanese pounds (\u00a3133) to militias near the border in order to cross. Almost 450,000 Sudanese have crossed into Chad since June.
\nAnother Ardamata resident, Mubarak Osman, says the gunmen arrived and surrounded the town before the attack. He and six other men were ordered to bury dozens of bodies in mass graves.
\nThe CIR says that satellite imagery shows fires in residential areas across Aradamata between 2 and 10 November, including at a camp for displaced people
\nAdam Mousa Obama, from the group Darfur Victim Support, which publishes videos of RSF abuses, says the group targets men in particular, to take their land and wipe them out as an Indigenous Darfuri group. The RSF grew out of, and is heavily comprised of, the Janjaweed militias that fought on behalf of the Sudanese government during the war in Darfur, and was responsible for atrocities that qualify as crimes against humanity, according to Human Rights Watch.
\nWhen they took Ardamata they made an announcement that all boys should come out. When they did, they started shooting them all. They want to destroy all the Indigenous people,\u201d says Obama. \u201cThe youth have the power and ability to fight. They don\u2019t want them to stay alive.\u201d
\nObama says it is time for world leaders \u201cto stop the massacre \u2026 It\u2019s a shame on humanity that this is still going on. There is a genocide going on in west Darfur.\u201d
\nFilippo Grandi, the UN\u2019s high commissioner for refugees, warned last week of the potential for a repeat of what happened in Darfur in the 2000s. The UN\u2019s expert on genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, warns of \u201ca cycle of violence that finds no end\u201d.
\n\u201cThe latest reports from the Darfur region depict a deeply disturbing picture of continued systematic and indiscriminate attacks against civilians, including along ethnic lines,\u201d says Nderitu. \u201cCurrent dynamics in the region could lead to further mass killings in an environment of complete lawlessness and impunity. The risks of genocide and related atrocity crimes in the region remain grimly high.\u201d
\nThe RSF has denied responsibility for the violence in Ardamata, blaming it on the Sudanese army.
\nMohamed Suliman, a senior disinformation researcher at the Civic AI Lab at Northeastern University in Boston, says the RSF has used social media in an attempt to build an image of legitimacy, by issuing denials of alleged crimes and making promises to investigate, but has not followed up on claims it would investigate violence.
\nActivists warn that the RSF is better armed than the Janjaweed of more than a decade ago.
\nCIR-verified footage posted on a pro-RSF account on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows soldiers using a multiple launch rocket system. The footage, filmed on mobile phones, shows the missile system mounted on a flatbed truck. Cheers are heard as it is fired.
\nThese weapon systems have the capacity to cause significant damage and their use poses a risk to the civilian population,\u201d says Anouk Theunissen, the team leader for CIR\u2019s Sudan Witness project. The CIR has also verified video of medical workers being abducted from a hospital in Nyala.
\nAn activist from the city told the Guardian she had to escape Darfur by taking a series of cars through remote areas after the RSF besieged the homes of residents and held her parent\u2019s hostage in their home.
\nThe conflict is creating a humanitarian crisis in El Fasher in north Darfur, says Dr Mohammed Shatta, who is coordinating field operations for charity Relief International.
\nShatta says that people are struggling to get water, medication is running out and that checkpoints around the city make it difficult for patients and medical staff to travel to health facilities. \u201cEl Fasher has become like a ghost town. You see parts of the city where you don\u2019t see anyone. It\u2019s so quiet you can hear your own breath,\u201d he says.
\nKashif Shafique, the country director for Relief International Sudan, says he is concerned about the use of heavy artillery and airstrikes.
\n\u201cWe have not yet seen violence like it \u2026 Thousands of people living in El Fasher have already been displaced as a result of previous conflicts. This escalation is driving families, particularly women and children, to uproot again and flee to neighbouring states and countries, such as Chad. These locations are already unable to cope with the number of refugees arriving to find safety.\u201d
\nAdam Mousa Obama, from Darfur Victim Support, points out that El Fasher has already taken in many of the displaced from other parts of Darfur. Two of the Darfuri rebel groups \u2013 who have so far stayed out of the fighting \u2013 said at the weekend that they would join forces with the SAF against the RSF.
\n\u201cIf full fighting breaks out in El Fasher then I don\u2019t think any civilian will survive,\u201d says Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Agencies – Sudan Events The UN, independent researchers and charities all highlight the brutality of a conflict that has left 9,000 people dead and 5.6 million displaced in the past seven months. Riding horses, camels and motorbikes, the paramilitaries arrived on the outskirts of Ardamata in early November. Sudan\u2019s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters took …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5129"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5159,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5129\/revisions\/5159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}