The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militia groups in Sudan led a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in the Darfur region last year, according to Human Rights Watch.

Over the course of an eight-month period in 2023, soldiers from the Arab-led RSF targeted unarmed civilians, including young boys, women and children, as well as lawyers, doctors, human rights defenders, academics, community leaders and religious figures belonging to the non-Arab Masalit community, the New York-based advocacy group said in a report said published on Thursday. The RSF has origins in the government-backed janjaweed militias that perpetrated the Darfur genocide in the early 2000s.

“During their campaign, RSF fighters and allied militias used derogatory racial slurs against Masalits and people from other non-Arab ethnic groups,” it said. “They told them to leave, that the land was no longer theirs, and that it would be ‘cleaned’ and become ‘the land of the Arabs.’”

A spokesperson for the RSF didn’t immediately respond to questions about the report sent by email. HRW cited an RSF statement from July 2023 in which the militia reiterated its denial that its forces committed any abuses, describing the unrest in West Darfur as a “purely tribal conflict” in which the RSF is “not a party,” according to the report.