Amid mounting reports on “appalling” violence in Sudan’s paramilitary-held El Fasher, the United Nations Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on November 14 ordering the conduct of investigation in the embattled city.
The UN’s top rights body made the decision during a special session in Geneva, Switzerland.
Specifically, the adopted resolution mandates the organisation’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan to urgently probe the alleged “crimes against humanity” committed in El Fasher and identify perpetrators so they can be “held accountable.”
Speaking at the session on Friday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk insisted that the “atrocities that are unfolding in El Fasher were foreseen and preventable” and “constitute the gravest of crimes.”
He mentioned the “bloodstains” found on the ground of the city, as shown in photographs taken from space, in what appeared to be evidence of mass execution.
“The stain on the record of the international community is less visible but no less damaging,” Turk noted.
He took aim at the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Sudanese paramilitary group that took over El Fasher on October 26, after an 18-month siege in the country’s persisting civil war.
Its men were reportedly behind the waves of abuses committed against civilians in North Darfur state capital.
“… since the RSF took control of El Fasher, there have been mass killings of civilians, ethnically targeted executions, sexual violence including gang rape, abductions for ransom, widespread arbitrary detentions, attacks on health facilities, medical staff and humanitarian workers and other appalling atrocities,” Turk said, as quoted by Al Jazeera.
The Commissioner then called on the international community “to stand up against these atrocities,” which he described as “a display of naked cruelty used to subjugate and control an entire population.”
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Allegation of genocide
While the RSF has denied targeting civilians in its raging war with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the UN, human rights groups and other observers have maintained evidence suggesting otherwise.
In addition to the satellite images Turks mentioned in Geneva, testimonies from the victims of rape and sexual violence, which include children, have also made headlines.
In early November, the Sudan Doctors Network, a local medical organisation, said RSF members were burning dead bodies or burying them in mass graves in an attempt to conceal the mass executions in El Fasher.
The killings have been linked to RSF’s alleged objective to transform the ethnically mixed Darfur region into an Arab-dominated area.
“What happened in El Fasher is not an isolated incident but rather another chapter in a full-fledged genocide carried out by the RSF, blatantly violating all international and religious norms that prohibit the mutilation of corpses and guarantee the dead the right to a dignified burial,” the Network said in a statement.
Latest data from the United Nations shows nearly 100,000 residents of El Fasher’s 260,000 population have fled since RSF seized the city last month, while many remain trapped.
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Adam Peaker 
Hyacinth Estrada 
Ian Trinidad