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Video shows woman being tortured by RSF in Sudan as genocide continues

A video has emerged of Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters in Sudan suspending a young woman from a tree.

The video, from North Darfur, shows the militia torturing 22-year-old Gisma Ali Omer. She is hanging from a tree by her arms, and the fighter shows his face, looking proud.

Genocide

Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023, as fighting broke out between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Since then, the war has displaced over 13m people, with 30m people needing assistance and 25m “experiencing acute hunger”. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has described the situation as a catastrophe of “staggering scale and brutality.”

The RSF

In 2013, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo formally established the RSF. It was previously accused of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the region’s non-Arab population. But even before 2013, it had around 5,000 active militia which were armed and active.

Back in 2003, Sudan’s then-leader, Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, mobilised Arab herders to fight against Black African insurgents in Darfur. Then, between 2003 and 2005, the government of Sudan, with the aid of Janjaweed militias, carried out mass atrocities against the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit communities in Darfur.

Armed conflict and targeted killings in Darfur caused about 300,000 civilian deaths and displaced around 2.7m people.

As the Canary previously reported, Human Rights Watch has accused the RSF of ethnic cleansing of the Masalit ethnic group and other non-Arab groups.

HRW added that the widespread killings raised the possibility that the RSF and their allies had “the intent to destroy in whole or in part” the Massalit people, which constitutes a genocide.

The US has accused Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the head of the RSF, of “systematic atrocities”.

He also controls some of Sudan’s gold mines and smuggles the metal to the UAE.

The Sudanese army has accused the UAE of backing the RSF and carrying out strikes in Sudan, which, of course, the UAE denies.

A United Nations investigation concluded that the RSF and its allied militias had:  

Committed the war crimes of violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; committing outrages upon personal dignity; rape, sexual slavery and any form of indecent assault; pillage; conscripting or enlisting children under the age of 15 or using them to participate actively in hostilities; intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population; intentionally
directing attacks against persons and objects involved in humanitarian assistance and other specially protected objects; and ordering the displacement of the civilian population for reasons related to the conflict. The Fact-Finding Mission further considers that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the RSF has committed the crimes against humanity of murder; torture; enslavement; rape, sexual slavery, and acts of a sexual nature of comparable gravity; persecution on the basis of intersecting ethnic and gender grounds in connection with the foregoing acts; and forcible displacement of population

Additionally, it found that the SAF and its allied forces had:

Committed the war crimes of violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture; committing outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.

Massacres

The UAE-backed RSF have committed massacre after massacre in Sudan.

Al Jazeera reported that:

In one village, Shag Alnom, more than 200 people were killed in a “terrible massacre”, the group said. The victims were either “burned inside their homes” or shot. In the neighbouring villages, 38 other civilians were also killed and dozens more have been forcibly disappeared.

Emergency Lawyers also condemned RSF for turning villages full of civilians into military targets:

Back in July, a senior prosecutor for the International Criminal Court found that:

On the basis of our independent investigations, the position of our office is clear. We have reasonable grounds to believe that war crimes and crimes against humanity have been and are continuing to be committed in Darfur

She also added that there was an “inescapable pattern” of offending, which targets gender and ethnicity through rape and sexual violence.

As Raga Makawi wrote for the New Internationalist, there has been:

A long and systematic history of violence against women in Sudan.

Makawi pointed to a confluence of laws designed to criminalise and subjugate women. Both RSF armed militias and government security forces have perpetrated mass sexual violence to intimidate and assert control, making women’s bodies a ‘battleground’ in the ongoing conflict.

In short, Makawi summed up that:

Women in Sudan today are once again the victims of mass atrocities committed by armed actors in pursuit of political and economic gain.

This footage of RSF forces torturing Omer is visual evidence of these heinous crimes against Sudanese women from marginalised groups. It’s a reminder that the cost of conflict and genocide is a gendered one – and it is often shouldered by women and girls from oppressed communities most of all.

Feature image via The Canary 

By HG

This post was originally published on Canary.