Reporting to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in al-Fashir, Volker Turk condemned the horrific scenes after the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF) unleashed a “wave of intense violence” after 18 months of brutal siege.
“Thousands of people have been killed in a few days, and tens of thousands are in fear,” he said, stressing the need to “hold those responsible to account and ensure that this never happens again.”
The Sudanese regular army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, and the conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and triggered one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said that during a recent visit to Sudan, he heard first-hand testimonies from survivors of the violence in al-Fashir and that he had “rarely seen people so traumatized”.
– They consistently reported mass killings and executions of civilians both inside the city and as people fled – said Turk, also adding that he had heard of widespread torture, rape and sexual violence.
– Survivors also spoke of seeing piles of dead bodies along the roads leading away from al-Fashir, in an apocalyptic scene that one person compared to Judgment Day – he said.
Such crimes were foreseeable and could have been prevented, he added.
His office, he pointed out, has been warning for more than a year about the risk of mass crimes in the besieged city of al-Fashir”.
– The threat was clear, but our warnings were ignored – he complained.
While the RSF were responsible for the crimes committed in al-Fashir, he insisted that the international community had a responsibility to “do more”.
– If we stand aside and wring our hands while armies and armed groups commit well-known international crimes, we can only expect worse – he warned, according to AFP.
(Vijesti.ba / FENA)
