Human Rights Watch on Tuesday urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate “war crimes” in Darfur, where fighting continues despite calls for a “negotiated way out” in war-torn Sudan. three months.
The air raids are once again shaking the capital, report residents of Khartoum under automatic weapon fire.
However, on Monday, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the East African bloc to which Sudan belongs, called for “an unconditional ceasefire” before representatives of the Rapid Support Forces ( FSR), present at the meeting in Addis Ababa, which was however boycotted by the Sudanese army.
For the experts, the leaders of the two camps, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, who leads the paramilitaries of the FSR, and the commander of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, have since the start of hostilities, on April 15, chooses a war of attrition and a military victory rather than negotiations and concessions.
“Negotiated way out of the crisis”
For US Ambassador John Godfrey, evacuated from Sudan in April, “a military ‘victory’ for one of the two belligerents would mean an unacceptable human cost and damage for the country”, already one of the poorest in the world.
We need “a negotiated way out of the crisis” which “must not – and cannot – be a return to the status quo before April 15”, when the two generals now at war held the reins of the country together after dismissing the civilians after a putsch, he claims.
IGAD called on Monday to “study a possible deployment” in Sudan of the East African Standby Force (EASF) “to protect civilians and guarantee humanitarian access”, an action whose operational reality comes up against many many obstacles.
Kenyan President William Ruto, head of IGAD, called for “a humanitarian zone, within a radius of 30 kilometers around Khartoum, to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid”, of which more than half of the Sudanese now need to survive.
It is his presidency that the Sudanese army rejects. She accuses Mr. Ruto of being on the side of the FSR.
The FSRs have been under fire from human rights defenders for nearly three months. Because the war – whose toll is very underestimated is 3,000 dead and three million displaced persons and refugees – carries its share of abuses.
Executed in schools
Looting, rape, executions on an ethnic basis, many residents of Khartoum and Darfur, bordering Chad, told AFP the chilling story of the litany of atrocities committed mostly by the RSF, according to them.
For Human Rights Watch (HRW), dozens of people were killed and injured when “several thousand” fighters from the RSF and Arab tribes attacked the town of Misterei, in Darfur, at the end of May.
Arrived at dawn in “des pickupon motorbikes and on horseback,” they “almost burnt down” the town of 46,000 people, according to HRW.
Facing them, armed civilians from the Massalit community – one of the main non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur – responded.
“The FSR and Arab tribes have summarily executed at least 28 Massalit,” reports the NGO.
Civilians were hunted down in schools and mosques where they had taken refuge. The attackers went to schools at least eight times in search of men whom they summarily executed, according to testimonies.
“Many of these violations amount to war crimes,” said the NGO, urging the ICC – which is already investigating crimes committed in Darfur in the 2000s – to seize Misterei.
We need “a stronger international response to this spreading conflict”, says Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, researcher at HRW.
Fleeing violence in Darfur, more than 230,000 people have arrived in Chad, according to the UN.
“They arrive injured, scared, with their children and some clothes. They need security and humanitarian aid,” says the World Food Programme.
However, two major obstacles stand before humanitarians: malnutrition, when “according to estimates, more than 10% of children arriving in Chad are malnourished”, and the rainy season, which puts new roads out of service every day. use.