“They burned us in the name of religion, killed us in the name of religion, jailed us in the name of religion” – Alaa Saleh, a 22 year old student from Khartoum, emerged as one of the defining figures of the months long protests that resulted in the expulsion of Omar-Al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president. A video of Saleh perched atop a car looking exemplary in a white gown and gold moon shaped earrings as she echoed the sentiments of the ordinary citizens of Sudan went viral which led to her being dubbed as the “Nubian queen”.
On June 3 2019, the Rapid Support Forces operating under the current transitional Sudanese Government enforced brutal crackdown upon the protestors in Sudan. The Khartoum massacre on June 3 claimed the lives of over 100 defenceless civilians. Other barbaric incidents included the rape and abuse of over 50 men and women. The unarmed demonstrators defencelessly bore witness to these atrocities as the bodies of the victims of the blood bath were dumped in the Nile by the paramilitary forces.
For years, the population of Sudan looked on helplessly at the devastation wrought by military rule and unsteady governments. Omar-Al-Bashir came to power in Sudan through a military coup in 1989. 30 years later, it was the armed forces of Sudan that turned its back on Al-Bashir as he was ousted from power on 11 April, 2019. However, the dissenting voices were far from appeased. Another protestor, Ahmed Abbas, in an interview with an online media outlet asserted the importance of a civilian government which is representative of the dreams and aspirations of the Sudanese population.
Al-Bashir was removed from power only to give way to the Transitional Military Council which is spearheaded by Lt. Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan. Another military official who is at the helm of affairs is Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, popularly known as “Hemeti”. Hemeti also serves as the commander of the RSF, the paramilitary forces responsible for the Khartoum massacre.
The Transitional Military Council suspended the country’s constitution, imposed curfews, and ordered the cessation of the continuing demonstrations. Following the TMC’s takeover, the UN Human Rights officials persisted upon the introduction of civilian rule. Ms. Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, stated that the requests of the protestors needed to be addressed.
It wasn’t long ago that the people of Sudan felt empowered through the peaceful protests and defiant slogans of the demonstrators. However, Sudan has descended into absolute chaos following the RSF’s suppression of the dissenters. Mohamed Matter is one of the many casualties of the June 3 massacre as he died protecting two women during the bloodshed.
Alaa Saleh noted that the RSF’s actions weren’t unexpected as Hemeti had previously served as Al-Bashir’s enforcer in the Darfur Genocide and other crimes against humanity.
The International Criminal Council had charged Al-Bashir with charges of genocide, and transgressions against humanity. But the military refused to extradite Al-Bashir as several forces in the transitional government have also been associated with genocide and war crimes. The Darfur genocide, referred to as the first genocide in the 21st century, began in 2003. Violence and unrest continues even today. Much of the violence in Sudan, which has created over 1 million refugees, has been credited to militias known as the Janjaweed, a group of government-armed and funded Arab militias. The war in Darfur has also increased tensions in neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic as hundreds of thousands of refugees’ stream over the two countries’ borders to escape violence.
The militia’s name roughly translates to ‘devils on horseback’ (jinnī – spirit and jawad – horse). Janjaweed militiamen are mainly members of nomadic “Arab” tribes who have long been at odds with Darfur’s settled “African” farmers.
Beginning in 2002, insurgents from Darfur’s sedentary agriculturalist population, protested what according to them was unfair treatment by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, they led strikes on government installations. The Sudanese armed forces reacted with devastating aerial bombardments of rebel strongholds. Two of the most prominent rebel groups, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) mounted a joint attack on the Sudanese air base at Al-Fāshir in April 2003, capturing dozens of prisoners and destroying aircraft. In response, the Arab militia or the Janjaweed were organized as a counterinsurgency force. Provided with communications equipment and arms by Sudanese military intelligence, the Janjaweed forces turned the tide of battle in Darfur. They routed the SLA and directed what was termed by international observers as an ethnic cleansing of the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit people. Any Janjaweed raid would begin with an attack by the Sudanese air force, with Anotov bombers or helicopter gunships targeting civilian settlements. Within hours, Janjaweed would enter into the area, killing and mutilating the men, killing or kidnapping the children and raping the women. They would then destroy the basic supplies of village life—burning fields and houses, seizing anything of value and poisoning wells. Looting, stealing livestock, burning food stocks, enslaving and raping women and children are common. Dead bodies were tossed in wells to pollute water supplies and entire villages are burned to the ground.
Until 2003, the conflicts were mostly over Darfur’s scarce land and water resources. Both international observers and victims claim that the Janjaweed were no longer the patchy militias of yore, but are instead well-equipped fighting forces that enjoy the evident assistance of the Sudanese government.
The Janjaweed has its roots in the long-running civil war that affected one of Sudan’s neighbours, Chad. Libya, intervened in the conflict in 1980. Libya provided material funding to Arab nomads in eastern Chad, to supplement its own forces in the region. Across the border in Darfur, the Sudanese government gave ammunition and arms to Arabic-speaking Abbala nomads and recruited them to act as an armed restraint against Chadian intrusions into Sudan during that time. Those two groups later formed the basis of the Janjaweed.
After Omar al-Bashir was overthrown on April 11, Western diplomats made no error about who was in command. Ambassadors from the Britain, United States, and the European Union did not shake hands with the provisional military council’s president, the obscure army general Abdel Fattah al-Burhan; they met with his younger deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, widely known by the nickname “Hemeti.”
According to central committee of Sudanese doctors, at least 108 people have been killed and more than 500 wounded after the security forces opened fire on Monday to clear demonstrators from their site in downtown Khartoum which they had occupied for weeks demanding civilian rule after the autocratic leader Omar al Bashir was deposed in April. The raid marked a pivotal moment in the week’s long struggle between the powerful TMC and opposition groups over who should lead Sudan’s transition to democracy following the removal of the former president.
The UN plans to relocate some of the staff or personnel from Sudan because of the violence created and for security reasons while retaining only some staff to perform critical functions. After the violent dispersal of a protest camp in the capital, the African Union held an emergency meeting and the UN has decided to pull staff out of Sudan.
China and Russia rejected calls from European and African countries to freeze the planned shutdown of a peacekeeping mission to Sudan’s Darfur region. Russia and China stated that the drawdown must continue. The Chinese deputy ambassador said that the Sudanese government has the capacity to maintain peace and security on its own.
Britain, France, Germany and the African countries on the Security Council told the group that the decision on closing the joint UN-African union mission should be put on hold while Sudan is engulfed in crisis.
The council is scheduled to vote on the mandate of the mission known as UNAMID on 27th of June.
Amnesty international and human rights watch have said that the instability has an impact on
Darfur and that the peacekeepers should remain. UN human rights official Andrew Gilmour said that there have been increased reports of killing, abduction, and sexual violence in Darfur in recent months.
Sudan’s military rulers have issued a decree ordering UNAMID to hand over all of its camps in Darfur to the rapid support forces, RSF, which led the crackdown on the protestors .the RSF accused of dispersing the protest camp with gunfire, grew out of the Janjaweed militia that human rights groups accuse of committing war crimes including killings, rape, and torture of civilians in Sudan’s western region of Darfur after the outbreak of conflict there in 2003. But the
UN peacekeeping chief, Jean Pierre said the plans to turn over all its camps to the Sudanese forces as part of the drawdown have been suspended. According to the UN, about 7200 troops and police remain in Darfur from the 16000 deployed at the height of the conflict and more than 300000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in the violence after a series of phased drawdowns.
On Monday, the AU commission chairman, Moussa Faki Mahamat called for an immediate and transparent investigation in order to hold all those responsible, accountable for the violence. The chairman has also called on TMC, transitional military council, to protect civilians from further harm.
Washington called on Sudan’s military rulers to desist from violence and urged talks with protestors in Sudan.
Social media was labelled one of the leading forces behind Bashir’s dethronement. The military government has stripped the civilians of internet access. In spite of these strict regulations the crisis in Sudan has made its way into the day-to-day conversations of people all over the world. A blue wave has extended across social media as netizens are willing to express their solidarity with the protestors.
The most intimidating roadblock for the human rights movement, as it’s evident from the ongoing unrest, is the safety of the unshielded civilians Videos posted on social media displayed soldiers trashing the deserted protest zone or firing on civilians. Bloodied protesters lay on the ground. Clouds of smoke rose over Khartoum as demonstrators congested streets in some parts of the city, burning tires at barricades.
In a video, filmed by a witness, a car was stopped by the security forces and the occupants inside were beaten mercilessly.
“They weren’t shooting in the air, they were shooting directly at people. They were targeting the legs, the stomach, and the chest. And in moments they were targeting the head directly. There is no other description to describe what happened, except that it was a massacre.” said one of the protestor.
Some who witnessed the brutality, spoke about it to the BBC News. Such as Ahmed, who was shot, “There was a huge number of these soldiers. There was very intense shooting. People who are getting shot and falling. Along with the shooting there were people around us who were hitting us with the sticks and whips and things. So we weren’t able to carry all the people who were shot.”
Mussab, who almost died from being beaten so hard, said “I was beaten all over my body, until I passed out. All the people with me had serious injuries. At that point, they had already cocked their weapons and were ready to shoot us, inside the clinic. The army officers took them outside. If they hadn’t arrived, we would have been executed.
Another person who was a victim of the brutality said “there was another patient lying next to me. His stomach was open from one side to the other. Some of his organs were outside. One of the people with me said to them: ‘this guy’s stomach is open and his intestines are out, he could die.’ They said – let him die. Then they hit the female doctor with a stick.”
“They were feeling her up, they were arguing over who gets he each one of them wanted to take her off the shoulder of our brother. What’s important is that they took her and they did what they did. At the end we found out that the girls had been dead from the start, they still didn’t let her be. I cannot describe one percent of what I saw. Death in all its forms. Ugliness in all its kinds.” reported by another traumatized protestor.
Dr. Sulaima Sharif, head of the Ahfad Trauma Center in Khartoum, said her staff has treated dozens of devastated women who were abused or beaten by the Support Forces this month. At least 15 said that they had been raped, she said, and numerous others had been beaten on the genitals by stick-wielding soldiers while in military detention.
The true number of rape victims is expected to be much higher, she added, because of stigma and cultural sensitivities.
Nahid Jabrallah, a women’s rights campaigner and activist. In an interview, reported that many rapes of young Sudanese women had been noted when security forces moved in to clear a sit-in protest in Khartoum.
‘Everyone was threatened with being raped’, she added. Jabrallah also told that both men and women had been raped. She said that some of the bodies recovered from the Nile River were of women who had been sexually abused.
Jabrallah also has a clear answer as to who was accountable for the brutal dispersal of the sit-down demonstration. “I saw for myself who attacked us. There’s no way those were members of the Sudanese army. We can very easily distinguish them from members of the so-called RSF militia. Not just because of the way they look, and their behaviour, but also because of the symbols on their clothes. They bear their names and indicate their membership of the RSF.”
“Buoyed by the end of the Cold War, outraged by the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, a global movement was born in the new millennium with a powerful rallying cry, echoing that of Holocaust survivors: never again.” – writes Philippe Bolopion, United Nations Director for Human Rights Watch. However, atrocities the world had promised to end have become the new normal. Powerful despots have always ruled with an iron hand continuously raging war against the weak and the innocent. Tibor Nagy, assistant US secretary of state for African affairs, noted that if chaos persisted then Sudan could become another failed state like Libya or Somalia.
Despite continuous transgressions, the dream of democracy has not been crushed. Al-Bashir’s rule was an exceedingly racist one as minorities were crushed and silenced in an unsparing manner. There are over 500 tribes in Sudan speaking more than 400 languages and dialects. 60% of the population in Sudan is still under 30. The young people have been at the forefront of the revolution demanding a rearrangement in the political scenario of the country. Anti-military demonstrators have pledged to carry out pro-democracy protests throughout Khartoum and other parts of the country. We have no choice but to continue,” stated Mohammed Yousef Mustafa, a spokesman for one of the lead protest organizations.
The international community must not stop at issuing sympathetic proclamations only. To salvage Sudan from a new wave of mayhem and desolation, the international community must lend its full support to the Sudanese people’s hopes for better governance.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King
#peaceoverwar #sudancrisis
By – Abantika Ghosh, Shipra Sahu & Astha Rao