First they killed the adults.
“Then they piled the children together and shot them,” a witness told Human Rights Watch. “They threw their bodies into the river.”
This is a scene from a humanitarian crisis currently unfolding in Sudan, which has been overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine and will change into much worse. It is a conflict, in accordance with some reports a genocide, that’s happening primarily within the Darfur region there.
You may remember Darfur: a genocide took place there 20 years ago. These atrocities sparked a serious response, led by protesters across the United States. Barack Obama and Joe Biden, then-senators, were amongst those that called for motion, they usually were joined by tens of 1000’s of highschool and college students and activists from churches, synagogues and mosques who worked together.
While lots of of 1000’s were slaughtered in Darfur on the time, the campaign probably also saved the lives of lots of of 1000’s of others. Other countries imposed sanctions and an arms embargo, the African Union and the United Nations established peacekeepers, and the Sudanese leader who led the genocide was eventually overthrown.
But today the carnage in Darfur continues – however the international response doesn’t. Most Western and African nations alike were fairly indifferent.
“The inaction pales in comparison to the situation 20 years ago, when world leaders felt morally and legally obliged to act in Darfur,” Human Rights Watch said in a brand new 228-page report.
A forgotten people
Some of the identical Arab forces answerable for the genocide within the 2000s are picking up where they left off. They massacre, torture, rape and mutilate members of non-Arab ethnic groups – the identical victims as before – and burn or burn their villages to the bottom, survivors say.
There is a racist element: Arab militias mock their victims as “slaves” and taunt them with racist epithets – the non-Arabs are sometimes darker-skinned. The militias seem like attempting to systematically drive non-Arab tribes out of the world.
The Rapid Support Forces, an Arab militia linked to the worst atrocities, are stationed on the outskirts of town of El Fasher, population about 800,000, and will be near looting it. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, warned that El Fasher was “on the brink of a large-scale massacre.”
Additionally, Sudan is running low on food and gunmen have prevented aid organizations from delivering food. The United Nations World Food Program reports that 28 million Sudanese affected by acute hunger resort to eating grass and peanut shells.
Cindy McCain, the top of the World Food Program, warned that Sudan could soon trigger the world's worst hunger crisis, endangering hundreds of thousands of lives. “Today the people of Sudan are forgotten,” she added.
A measure of worldwide indifference: Countries have provided just 8% of what the United Nations must support refugees pouring out of Sudan – including nearly 600,000 who reached Chad last 12 months, 88% of whom were women or are children.
The latest crisis in Sudan is the results of a civil war that began a 12 months ago between the military and the Rapid Support Forces, each dominated by Arabs. Attacks on civilians, equivalent to non-Arab tribes, which amount to collateral damage within the civil war, have been particularly brutal in Darfur.
When the non-Arab governor of West Darfur protested against “ongoing genocide,” he was arrested and executed by the Rapid Support Forces. Videos circulated showing his stripped and mutilated corpse.
According to reports from human rights monitors and survivors, the Rapid Support Forces killed boys and men and raped women and girls. In interviews with Reuters, greater than 40 moms described how their children, mostly sons, were killed by Rapid Support Forces. One was a two-year-old boy who was beaten to death in front of his mother and shot below the shoulder when he tried to intervene.
“A repeated failure”
The Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights released a report concluding that the atrocities met the legal standard of genocide, adding that it was “a repeated genocide and a repeated failure.”
“The international community has completely failed the non-Arab communities in Darfur who are facing ongoing genocide,” said Yonah Diamond, senior legal counsel on the Wallenberg Center.
And the worldwide response? The UN Security Council has passed two pathetic resolutions calling for a ceasefire, most recently just for the month of Ramadan. This week the United States sanctioned two Rapid Support Forces commanders over their actions in Darfur, a move that’s welcome but removed from sufficient. It is appalling that leading countries not only cannot muster any meaningful motion, but they can not even make a meaningful statement.
What we are able to do is, as we did 20 years ago, push for much greater efforts to finish the civil war in Sudan. This means an arms embargo and powerful pressure on countries just like the United Arab Emirates, which (despite their denials) are apparently fueling the war by supplying weapons to the Rapid Support Forces. A UN report cites evidence of cargo flights carrying weapons from the United Arab Emirates via Chad to the Rapid Support Force several times per week.
Leading countries may impose sanctions on Sudanese figures and urge the African Union and African members of the Security Council to indicate leadership. A Security Council visit to the Chad border would highlight the crisis, as would other high-level visits and statements.
“Darfur has been abandoned by everyone,” said Tirana Hassan, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
In impoverished Darfur, there’s a danger that after every genocide the vow of “never again” becomes “again.”
Nicholas Kristof is a columnist for The New York Times.
image credit : www.mercurynews.com