The European Union (EU) is “horrified” by “credible witness accounts” reporting “more than a thousand deaths” in just over two days in Darfur, western Sudan. “The recent atrocities appear to be part of a broader ethnic cleansing campaign by the RSF [Forces de soutien rapide, paramilitaires] with the aim of exterminating the non-Arab Masalit tribe from West Darfur,” said the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell in a press release on Sunday, November 12. They come “in addition to an initial wave of large-scale violence” in June, he said.
The war that began on April 15 between Army Commander-in-Chief General Abdel Fattah Al-Bourhane and General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo’s FSR resulted in more than nine thousand deaths, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled). as largely underestimated. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), more than 4.8 million people have been displaced in Sudan and 1.2 million to neighboring countries.
“Credible witnesses report that more than a thousand members of the Masalit tribe in Ardamata, West Darfur, were killed in just over two days in large-scale attacks by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and their affiliated militias,” the European Union writes . The UNHCR recently reported “more than eight hundred people” “killed by armed groups in Ardamata.”
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In particular, the EU “works with the International Criminal Court to identify and document human rights violations to ensure that their perpetrators are held accountable,” the press release said. The belligerents “have a duty to protect citizens,” she remembers.
The violence borders on “absolute evil”
“The international community must not close its eyes to what is happening in Darfur and allow a new genocide to take place in the region,” warns Brussels after the genocide in the early 2000s. According to the UNHCR, Ardamata was also the site of a refugee camp, where nearly a hundred shelters were destroyed.
Violence in Sudan borders on “absolute evil,” Clémentine Nkweta-Salami, UN humanitarian coordinator in the country, warned on Friday, expressing particular concern about ethnicity-based attacks in Darfur.
Asked about the risks of a repeat of the early 2000s genocide in the region, she said she was “very concerned.” “We continue to hope that we don’t end up on the same path.”
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