Dated Wed, 06 Dec 2023 - 23:49. Modified: 23:47 - here is a copy in full:
US finds war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Sudan war
Washington (AFP) – The United States said Wednesday that Sudan's rival forces have both committed war crimes in their brutal conflict and alleged a new ethnic cleansing campaign in scarred Darfur.
After months of rising concern and frustration at the failure of talks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken presented findings following an evaluation by the State Department.
Blinken said that both the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) -- whose longstanding tensions erupted into wide-scale violence on April 15 -- have committed war crimes.
The RSF has also carried out ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, he said, pointing to accounts of mass killings by the largely Arab force and its allied militias against the ethnically African Masalit people in Darfur.
Blinken said the campaign had "haunting echoes of the genocide that began almost 20 years ago in Darfur."
"Masalit civilians have been hunted down and left for dead in the streets, their homes set on fire and told that there is no place in Sudan for them," Blinken said, pointing as well to sexual violence.
Both the Sudanese army and the RSF "have unleashed horrific violence, death and destruction across Sudan," Blinken said in a statement.
The two sides "must stop this conflict now, comply with their obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, and hold accountable those responsible for atrocities," he added.
Army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, Burhan's former deputy, teamed up in October 2021 to derail a fragile transition to democracy in Sudan, where mass protests helped end decades of autocratic rule.
The violence erupted in April as the two failed to agree on the integration of the RSF into the army in line with a roadmap to civilian rule.
More than 10,000 people have been killed, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a monitor, with the United Nations saying 6.3 million more have been forced to flee their homes.
Echoes of scorched-earth Darfur war
Darfur -- roughly the size of France and home to around a quarter of Sudan's 48 million people -- is deeply scarred by a scorched-earth campaign launched two decades ago by the RSF's predecessor, the Janjaweed militia.
Then-dictator Omar al-Bashir used the Janjaweed to suppress non-Arab minorities -- a bloody campaign that eventually saw him charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
Human Rights Watch in a recent report said that the RSF killed hundreds of Masalit civilians in early November in what had "the hallmarks of an organized campaign of atrocities."
Quoting survivors, they said the RSF and allied fighters "went on a rampage" through a camp of displaced people targeting the Masalit people after seizing a base from the army.
The UN human rights office also called for an investigation into what it described as "six days of terror" against Masalit civilians.
Two decades ago, the Darfur bloodshed drew international outrage, including a US finding of genocide, but the latest violence comes amid a flurry of crises, including the Gaza war and fighting in Sudan's neighbor Ethiopia where the United States has also alleged war crimes.
Ben Cardin, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on the State Department to name a high-level envoy on the conflict who would "work with the Sudanese in support of their aspirations to establish a democratic, representative government."
The United States and Saudi Arabia have led negotiations aimed at ending the fighting, with the State Department initially hesitant to take actions that could alienate one side and break down communication.
But the two sides made no tangible progress when they met again a little over a month ago in the Saudi port city of Jeddah.
"The talks broke down because both parties -- (the army) and RSF -- repeatedly refused to adhere to the commitments that they made at those talks," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
View report at France24: https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20231206-us-finds-war-crimes-and-ethnic-cleansing-in-sudan-war
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Related report
From The Guardian
By Patrick Wintour Diplomatic Editor
Dated Tuesday, 22 August 2023 17.25 BST
Last modified on Tuesday 22 August 2023 17.59 BST
This article is more than 3 months old
War crimes being committed in Darfur, says UK minister Andrew Mitchell
Africa minister says civilian death toll horrific and UK is to send evidence to UN
War crimes and atrocities against civilians are being committed in Darfur, western Sudan, the UK’s Africa minister Andrew Mitchell said on Tuesday, becoming one of the first western officials to identify that the fighting in Sudan has developed into more than a power struggle between two rival factions.
Mitchell said there was growing evidence of serious atrocities being committed, describing the civilian death toll as horrific in a statement released by the Foreign Office. “Reports of deliberate targeting and mass displacement of the Masalit community in Darfur are particularly shocking and abhorrent. Intentional directing of attacks at the civilian population is a war crime.”
He added the UK would do all it could to assemble credible evidence to present to the UN security council, the UN Human Rights Council and the international criminal court.
There had been an expectation that the US would have explicitly joined the UK in making a formal atrocity determination, but so far the State Department has held off, partly because the US does not want to jeopardise talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, designed to end the civil war between Sudanese Armed Forces and the independent Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Observers claim the larger power struggle that broke out in April, with fighting in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, has provided cover for RSF allied forces to undertake ethnic cleansing in west Darfur, reviving memories of the genocide committed in Darfur 20 years ago.
The attacks on the Masalit and other ethnic communities are led by the Janjaweed militias allied with the RSF. The RSF is commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
More than 300,000 Sudanese nationals have crossed the border into neighbouring Chad since the conflict broke out, according to the UN’s migratory agency.
Kate Ferguson, co-executive director of the human rights NGO Protection Approaches, welcomed Mitchell’s statement saying: “He is absolutely right to condemn not only the armed conflict between the SAF and RSF which is devastating Sudan but also to highlight the deliberate targeting and mass displacement of non-Arab communities in Darfur.
“These two related but distinct trajectories of violence require related but distinct solutions; this reality must be a cornerstone for the UK government and the entire international system in the pursuit of peace in Sudan.
The Saudi peace talks rely on progress being made between different bad faith actors over which Riyadh seems to have little leverage. Others say the true external players in Sudan are Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, which are closely linked to the SAF and RSF respectively.
The ICC launched a new investigation into alleged war crimes in Sudan in July with ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan saying “we are in the midst of a human catastrophe”.
The UK has imposed sanctions on businesses linked to the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces in an effort to register its disapproval.
View original: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/22/war-crimes-being-committed-in-darfur-says-uk-minister-andrew-mitchell
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