A new report from the UN says that militia fighters in Darfur raped and attacked minority groups and used racial slurs and threats to make them have “Arab babies.”
There are claims from activists that the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary is trying to kill off non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur along with the details of the latest UN fact-finding mission report.
The report said that RSF fighters were sexually assaulting women and girls all over Sudan, where they have been fighting the army for control since April 2023. The victims were between the ages of 8 and 75.
But in Darfur, and especially against the Masalit group, victims said it was clear that the violence was based on race.
Survivors of Masalit rapes who heard the fighters say, “This year, all girls must be pregnant by the Janjaweed,” were quoted by the fact-finding mission.
Someone else from El Geneina said that her attacker told her, “We will make you, the Masalit girls, have Arab children.”
Heavy fighting and a long siege by RSF fighters took place in the city of El Geneina in the state of West Darfur. The city’s residents were mostly Masalit. The RSF took control of the city in June 2023.
It was said in the report that RSF fighters searched Masalit neighborhoods door-to-door for men to kill. Women were beaten, raped, and hurt in other ways, and then they were often told to leave Sudan for Chad, which is close by.
Caroline Buisman, who was in charge of the Sudan fact-finding mission, said that the RSF and other militias had committed war crimes against the Masalit people, such as sexual violence, torture, attacking civilians, and moving people against their will.
According to Buisman, the RSF and its allies committed rape and other forms of sexual violence against women as part of large-scale attacks that were aimed at the Masalit community because of their race.
The RSF got its start as a paramilitary group from the Janjaweed militias. Its leader, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, became well-known after the 2019 protests that ended Omar al-Bashir’s 30-year dictatorship.
With power on the edges of Sudanese society in Darfur, Dagalo was able to move to the center of things in Khartoum, the capital, where he was second-in-command of the transitional government. He worked with army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to keep civilians out of the way until they started fighting for control last year.
The RSF and the Sudanese army have been fighting for power across the country for 18 months. According to the UN, about 14 million people have been forced to leave their homes and at least 19,000 have been killed.
The RSF has taken over almost all of Darfur and set up camp in Khartoum, forcing the government to move to Port Sudan.
Hospitals have been attacked, services have broken down, and it is been hard to get food and medicine to areas that need them because of a lack of humanitarian access.
Human Rights Watch released a report in May that also found evidence of sexual violence based on race. The report said that many of the fighters used racial slurs, called the women they attacked slaves, and threatened to rape Masalit women until they had Arab babies.
It also talked about fighters who left after being told that the 15-year-old girl they wanted to rape came from a well-known Arab family.
Activists said that the RSF and the Janjaweed militias had a long history of sexual violence that went back to their many attacks on non-Arabs in the early 2000s. The International Criminal Court is currently looking into this period of violence for genocide.
Hala Al-Karib, regional director of the women’s rights group Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, said that things in Darfur have gotten worse since the UN stopped keeping the peace in the area in 2020, giving Arab militias and their leaders more power.
The RSF has used sexual violence as a way to get rid of different groups of people, and there are clear signs of genocide, especially in western Darfur.” The full scope of what took place there is still unknown, Karib said.
“The RSF has used gang rape, other forms of sexual violence, and sexual slavery as a way to take over land, force people to leave their homes, break up communities, and eliminate any chance of resistance to their goal of total control over the region.”
A doctor and activist from Darfur named Marwa Gibril also said that the RSF was breaking up communities all over Sudan through sexual violence, but that they were focusing on ethnic groups in Darfur.
She said that the tribes that RSF hires from thought they were better than other groups because they were Arab.
“To keep their power, they invade these areas and kill the men. They also change the gene pool by raping women and having babies who are Arabs instead of Masalit, Fur, or any other black race,” Gibril said.