Human Rights Watch (HRW) 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. war for three months.
The air raids are once again shaking the capital, report residents under automatic weapon fire.
However, on Monday, the Quartet of Igad, the East African bloc to which Sudan belongs, had called for “an unconditional ceasefire” before representatives of the Rapid Support Forces (FSR, paramilitaries), 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 and the commander of the army, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, have since the beginning of hostilities on April 15 chosen a war of attrition and 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 having dismissed the civilians after a putsch, he pleads.
In Addis Ababa, 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 faces many challenges.
Kenyan President William Ruto, at the head of the Quartet, called for “a humanitarian zone, within a radius of 30 km around Khartoum, to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid”, of which more than half of the Sudanese have 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 very underestimated toll 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 inhabitants of Khartoum and Darfur, bordering Chad, told AFP the chilling account of the litany of atrocities committed in the majority by the RSF according to them.
For HRW, dozens of people were killed and injured when “several thousand” fighters from the RSF and Arab tribes attacked Misterei in Darfur at the end of May.
Arriving at dawn on “pickups, motorcycles and on horseback”, they “almost completely burned” the city of 46,000 inhabitants, according to HRW.
Facing them, armed Massalit civilians – one of the main non-Arab ethnic groups in Darfur – from a local self-defense group 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”, argues 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 Program (WFP).
But two major obstacles stand before humanitarians: malnutrition, while “according to estimates more than 10% of children arriving in Chad are malnourished”, and the rainy season, which puts new roads out of use every day.