UNHCR: Our Collective Duty is to Hold (RSF) Responsible to Account

Geneva – Sudanhorizon
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, briefed the Human Rights Council, Monday, on the events in El Fasher, focusing on the details of the atrocities committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF)militias. He stated that measures must be taken to hold the RSF, its partners, and those who assisted and backed them accountable for the crimes committed.
Türk said that the events in El Fasher, Sudan, last October were a human rights catastrophe that could have been avoided. After 18 months of siege, starvation, and bombardment, the RSF militias unleashed a wave of extreme violence. Thousands were killed within days, and tens of thousands fled in terror. “Our collective duty is to hold those responsible to account and ensure that this never happens again.”
The High Commissioner noted that since his last briefing to the Council on El Fasher, he had visited Sudan and personally listened to firsthand accounts from some of the survivors of the recent attack. He said, “I have rarely seen people so deeply traumatized by what they have endured. My team interviewed more than 140 victims and witnesses in Northern State and eastern Chad.”
He added that all the interviews conducted by his team reported ongoing massacres and summary executions of civilians and those no longer participating in hostilities, both within the city and as people fled. They spoke of rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture and ill-treatment, arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, and kidnapping for ransom.
He noted that, in a horrific example, people who had fled to locations thousands of kilometers apart gave consistent accounts of massacres targeting hundreds of people who had sought refuge at El Fasher University. Others spoke of attacks on health facilities and healthcare workers, and his team heard “compelling testimonies that some victims were targeted because of their non-Arab origins, particularly members of the Zaghawa ethnic group.”
He confirmed that the (RSF) and allied militias systematically used sexual violence as a weapon of war, and that RSF fighters and their allies abducted people as they fled, demanding exorbitant ransoms for their release. Most of the victims were men and teenage boys considered to be of fighting age, but women and children were also targeted.
The RSF and its allies also detained individuals believed to be members of the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied joint forces, as well as government officials, doctors, journalists, teachers, and local humanitarian volunteers. “Former detainees reported that more than 2,000 men were being held at El Fasher Children’s Hospital. Those who died in detention were reportedly buried near the hospital.”
The High Commissioner announced that these crimes would be detailed in a public report to be released in the coming days.
He expressed his regret that his office had repeatedly sounded the alarm about the risk of mass atrocities in the besieged city of El Fasher for over a year and that they had documented patterns of such atrocities on several occasions, including during the Rapid Support Forces’ attack to recapture the Zamzam camp for internally displaced persons in April 2015.
He said the threat was clear, but the warnings were not taken seriously. The Rapid Support Forces and their allies and supporters bear full responsibility for these heinous crimes.

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