“Crimes Against the Dead”

Dr Inas Mohamed Ahmed
Wars are among the most devastating humanitarian catastrophes and the most widespread. Because of their frequency, the rapid development of weapons, and the scale of death, destruction, and ruin they leave everywhere, they have become the most common threat to human survival.
Civilians are always the ones who pay the price of war, and their bodies remain the witnesses to suffering and tragedy. Often, corpses are subjected to violations that contravene all humanitarian norms. For this reason, the world has long sought to limit such abuses. International efforts since the nineteenth century have aimed to reduce the horrors of war, beginning earnestly after the fierce battles between the French and Austrian armies in June 1859. These clashes resulted in massive casualties on both sides, described in the book A Memory of Solferino by the Swiss observer Jean Henry Dunant, who witnessed the suffering of the wounded and the dead.
In his book, Dunant called on the international community to adopt a global position to protect victims of armed conflict. His appeals gained support from a substantial number of states. This led to the establishment of the International Committee of the Red Cross on 17 February 1863 in Geneva, a neutral humanitarian association. International conferences soon followed to formalise protection mechanisms for victims of armed conflict through international agreements—ensuring the protection of bodies of the deceased and recognising any violation of them as a war crime that must be brought to justice. One of the most fundamental human rights is the right to human dignity, whether in life or after death, including the right not to be desecrated or mutilated, and the right to respect the sanctity of death—principles upheld by divine religions and human customs alike.
Today, the world is observing the war in Sudan, one of the most brutal and savage conflicts in recent times—a war that has made death an everyday reality for years, without any decisive or serious international response.
Meanwhile, the terrorist militia has committed every imaginable crime on the grim register of crimes against humanity and war crimes. In truth, the atrocities and violations committed by the militia against civilians represent a global record in brutality, savagery, and barbarism.
This time, the militia committed a heinous crime against civilians who were already martyrs—souls that have risen to the Most Just, after their pure blood watered the soil of El Fasher. In an attempt to conceal its atrocity, the foolish militia committed yet another crime: it burned the bodies, deluded into thinking that no one would know, and that this would erase evidence of its brutality. What the militia failed to realise was that satellites had recorded everything in detail.
According to the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University, which issued a report based on satellite imagery, the terrorist militia burned bodies in two separate locations in the city, one of them near the Saudi Hospital. The lab confirmed that the images showed thick plumes of smoke and dark patches consistent with deliberate burning—complicating efforts to count the dead, identify them, or gather any information about them. The report called for an urgent international investigation under UN supervision to document what happened and ensure the perpetrators do not escape justice. Thus ends the report.
The United Nations and all international mechanisms know exactly what happened—and what is still happening—in El Fasher. What occurred will remain a stain on the conscience of humanity, for every atrocity committed against the people of Sudan by this terrorist militia has been met with timid condemnation, lifeless statements, and lukewarm denunciations, as though the genocide, systematic killings, arson, theft, looting, forced displacement, rape, and torture unfolding in Sudan were mere scenes from an action film.
The international community is well aware that the war in Sudan has produced horrific levels of barbarity and suffering; that the victims of crimes against humanity are women, children, and the elderly, trapped between the hammer of mass killing and the anvil of death by starvation. Death has become the common denominator of all aspects of this war.
The international community also knows that these victims have a right to protection under international law. Article 17 of the First Geneva Convention (1949) and Article 32 of Additional Protocol I (1977) stipulate special protection for the bodies of victims of armed conflict—requiring respect for the sanctity of death and prohibiting any desecration, mutilation, manipulation, or burning of bodies. International humanitarian law also mandates that victims be buried according to their religious rites. Article 16 of the Tenth Hague Convention (1907) further requires medical examination of bodies before burial.
These legal protections also apply to prisoners or detainees killed in captivity, requiring the establishment of clearly identifiable graves and the recording of names and details in official registers overseen by the Red Cross—records that can be accessed through the ICRC or any international investigative body. Identifying victims is essential for determining the fate of the missing and uncovering the truth of their lives or deaths, and for documenting international crimes committed against civilians and ensuring that perpetrators do not evade justice.
Globally, Sudanese people have made their voices heard with clarity and righteousness. They have explained their cause and demonstrated their unity behind the armed forces in cleansing the country of these brutes. Free peoples around the world—including artists, athletes, politicians, thinkers, and scholars—have expressed solidarity with Sudan against the blood-soaked, terrorist (Emirati-backed) militia. So, where is the international community and its mechanisms in all this?
The question remains:
Why has the international community still not designated this terrorist militia as a terrorist organisation?
Why has the rogue micro-state supporting the militia not been deterred and compelled to cease its assistance?
In all respects, the militia has met every criterion of criminality, every degree of savagery, every manifestation of terrorism needed to earn the designation “terrorist organisation” before the eyes of the world. The international community has no fig leaf left to conceal its weakness and failure.

Shortlink: https://sudanhorizon.com/?p=8732