Rights body accuses RSF of war crimes in South Kordofan
December 10, 2024 (NAIROBI) – The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) killed scores of civilians, and injured, raped and abducted many others in waves of attacks in Habila and Fayu, two towns in Sudan’s South Kordofan state between December 2023 and March 2024, a rights group said on Tuesday.
The attacks on mainly ethnic Nuba residents, Human Rights Watch said, constitute war crimes.
“The Rapid Support Forces’ abuse of civilians in South Kordofan is emblematic of continuing atrocities across Sudan,” Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, a senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch said, adding “These new findings underscore the urgent need for the deployment of a mission to protect civilians in Sudan.”
According to the rights entity, the attacks which occurred had not been widely reported.
Researchers at Human Rights Watch reportedly visited South Kordofan areas controlled by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement–North (SPLM-N), interviewing several displaced people.
The displacement followed clashes between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
According to the rights group, it researchers interviewed 70 displaced people, 40 of them survivors of RSF attacks on Habila, Fayu, and neighboring villages. The further analyzed satellite imagery of the area from December 2023 to October 2024.
Also interviewed were 24 other people, including aid workers and local officials, among others.
Human Rights Watch on Tuesday said it documented the killings of 56 unarmed people in these attacks, including 11 women and 1 child, based on interviews with witnesses.
The RSF, it said, killed people both execution-style in homes and by shooting them on the streets.
The actual figures, according to the rights body, may be significantly higher, given that most people fled in various directions after the attacks.
Human Rights Watch also said it documented the rape of 79 women and girls, including in the context of sexual slavery, based on interviews with survivors, witnesses, relatives and friends of the victims.
Since the start of the conflict between the SAF and the RSF in April 2023, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to SPLM-N-held territory, which experienced conflict throughout the 2010s, but is currently one of the most stable parts of Sudan. There have been clashes between the SAF, RSF and SPLM-N in other parts of South Kordofan bordering areas controlled by the SAF and the RSF.
There are also several testimonies from various people on the atrocities the RSF committed.
On December 31, 2023, RSF fighters reportedly attacked the town of Habila, held by the SAF, killing at least 35 civilians and unarmed fighters in deliberate and indiscriminate attacks, injured other civilians, and raped women and girls. They also looted extensively from civilians.
Three women told Human Right Watch that the RSF killed at least eight people, including their relatives, in the family compound where their extended family had taken refuge in al-Safa neighborhood early in the morning of December 31.
“When the RSF arrived, they told the men, ‘Get your weapons out for us!’” one woman said. “The men said they did not have guns. Then the RSF said, ‘Bring out your money.’ The men said they had no money. That’s when the RSF started shooting them.”
It described as war crimes the deliberate killings of civilians, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and the deliberate destruction of civilian property.
The rights group expressed concerns that the United Nations and the African Union have not taken concrete steps to protect civilians. For instance, in an October 28, 2024 report to the UN Security Council, which made recommendations for the protection of civilians, the UN Secretary-General acknowledged that Sudanese civilians and local and international human rights groups were calling for the creation of a civilian protection mission, but did not propose how it could be deployed.
“The United Nations and the African Union should take decisive steps to deploy a mission that can protect Sudanese civilians from rampaging forces,” Gallopin stressed, adding “A mission to protect civilians could deploy to areas where civilians have found refuge but where humanitarian needs are dire, such as the areas of South Kordofan we visited.”
Meanwhile Human Rights Watch said it sent, on November 25, a detailed email summary of its findings with specific questions to the RSF spokesperson, Lieutenant Colonel Al-Fateh Qurashi, but had not received any response.
(ST)