A series of attacks by Sudanese paramilitary forces in the western region of Darfur raise the possibility of “genocide” against non-Arab ethnic communities in Sudan, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), along with allied militias, have been widely accused of ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in their war with the regular army, which began in April 2023.The war has killed tens of thousands. That includes up to 15,000 people dead in the West Darfur town of El-Geneina, according to UN experts.

The area is the focus of the 186-page HRW report “‘The Massalit Will Not Come Home’: Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity in El-Geneina, West Darfur, Sudan.”

It describes: an ethnic cleansing campaign against the ethnic Massalit and other non-Arab populations.

According to HRW, from late April early November of last year, the RSF and allied militias:

conducted a systematic campaign to remove, including by killing, ethnic Massalit residents.

During the course of these abuses, women and girls were raped and subjected to other forms of sexual violence, and detainees were tortured and otherwise ill-treated. The attackers methodically destroyed critical civilian infrastructure, targeting neighborhoods and sites, including schools, in primarily Massalit displaced communities. They looted on a grand scale; and burned, shelled, and razed neighborhoods to the ground, after emptying them of residents.

Local human rights lawyers said they had tracked a pattern where fighters targeted “prominent members of the Massalit community.” This included doctors, human rights defenders, local leaders and government officials.

HRW spoke to one 17-year-old boy who described the killing of a number of adults and children:

Two RSF forces … grabb[ed] the children from their parents and, as the parents started screaming, two other RSF forces shot the parents, killing them. Then they piled up the children and shot them. They threw their bodies into the river and their belongings in after them.