By Tyler Campbell
Impunity Watch Reporter, Africa
KHARTOUM, Sudan – This Friday Human Rights Watch reported that the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF) significantly violated international human rights and humanitarian law. This report was based on two counterinsurgency campaigns that took place in 2014 and 2015. The first campaign was called Operation Decisive Summer and took place in February to May of 2014. The second campaign was called Operation Decisive Summer II and took place from January till June 2015.
The report form Human Right Watch contained quotes from 212 victims and RSF defectors who could no longer continue what they were being ordered to do. Here is the alarming quote that opened the report:
[The government soldiers] confiscated our belongings. They took our livestock. They beat the men. And then they raped us. They raped us in a group. Some women were raped by 8 or 10 men. Seventeen women were raped together. All of us were raped. Even the underage girls were raped.
– “Men With No Mercy” Human Rights Watch
Even more worrying is that these men actually had orders to go about their occupations this way. Four of the defected soldiers said that their commanding officers had ordered them to carry out their operations this way.
The list of human rights violations is as long as it is startling. There have been instances of forced displacement of communities from their homes. There are also reports of the destruction of certain necessities needed to live, including wells, food supplies, and the plunder of wealth. Finally, Human Rights Watch has reported “systematic attacks on civilian populations,” which including torture, killings and mass rapes.
The RSF was first created in 2013 by Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir. It is part of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services and is usually sent to rebel controlled areas, such as Darfur. These horrors are sadly not a new occurrence in Darfur. The fight between Sudan’s government and multiple rebel groups has been an ongoing story for 12 years. Even though the International Criminal Court indicted president Al Bashir in 2009. Little seems likely to change without heavy influence from the outside world.
Documentation of these atrocities is certainly a necessary step. However, it is slowly becoming a record of terrible events while the rest of the world is content to let it continue. Sadly, groups set up by the U.N. like UNAMID, the African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur, has been relatively ineffective at providing any aid or curtailing the RSF’s practices. The U.N. has continued to blame the Sudanese government for these less than optimal results. Claiming that the group’s access has been all but denied since they tried to gain access to Thabit in 2014.
For more information, please see:
Human Rights Watch – Men With No Mercy – 9 September 2015
allAfrica – Sudan: Background – Who Are the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan? – 9 September 2015
