Genocide in media shadow

In the shadow of the media coverage of Israel’s war against the terrorist group Hamas, the world’s most brutal race-murderers go free. A genocide has been ongoing in Sudan since last year, where the country’s Arab militias have killed 150,000 non-Arabs and forced 10 million more to flee. Furthermore, the Syrian genocide where 500,000 people have been killed and twelve million others displaced has already been forgotten.

RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo formerly led the Janjaweed Arab militia that was involved in the genocide in Darfur 20 years ago. Photo: Russian Government

TThis September, the journalist network Lighthouse Reports – in a joint investigation with the Washington Post, Le Monde and Sky News – revealed that an Arab militia in Sudan is involved in ethnic cleansing and illegal executions of unarmed civilians.
The Arab militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to commit serious war crimes against ethnic minorities in a war that since April 2023 has killed over 150,000 people and displaced over 10 million others.
RSF was started by the dictator accused of genocide, Omar al-Bashir, in 2013. Its nucleus was the Arab militia Janjaweed led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo who participated in the genocide in Sudan in 2003-2005. Last year the group tried to take control of Sudan via a war that broke out in April 2023 when the military tried to subdue them. RSF is supported by Libyan militia leader Khalifa Haftar and by the United Arab Emirates.
The war is hidden in the media-shadow because journalists cannot get to the front lines and there is an almost total absence of the internet.

Previously unpublished videos of the murders now tie leaders of the RSF militia to ethnic massacres in Darfur. For the first time, visual evidence obtained and verified by the journalist network Lighthouse Reports – in a joint investigation with the Washington Post, Le Monde and Sky News – confirm that RSF forces are involved in extrajudicial executions of unarmed civilians.
– The Arabs came and started killing people in the streets, Amina told Sky News.
– When they entered homes, they took everything they wanted and burned the rest. They wore civilian clothes, Amina went on.
– They weren’t in uniform so they could be disguised, but they were all RSF. They used motorcycles, camels and cars to attack the city.
The attack went on for almost nine hours with the Arab gunmen killing unarmed civilians before celebrating their brutality.
Residents told Sky News they saw militiamen going door-to-door hunting down civilian men in non-Arab neighbourhoods.

In the 16 months since the RSF first began its bloody war with the Sudanese army, their military advances in the Darfur region have often been marked by mass ethnic violence, according to Sky News.
Between 2003 and 2005, RSF’s predecessors, the Janjaweed, were responsible for a multi-ethnic genocide – with mass murder, genocidal rape, arson and scorched earth – that claimed the lives of 300,000 people.
As early as 2010, Sudanese President Omar al Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for genocide. No arrest warrants have been followed up and Al-Bashir has been able to travel to other Muslim states unconcernedly without their action. For example, he participated as a guest of honor at the Islamic Organization (OIC) meeting in Jakarta in 2016, where Muslim countries gathered to condemn Israel.