The genocide nobody is talking about

Violence in Darfur spikes again

Afraid to show his face and wedged into an overstuffed refugee camp on the Chad border, Ridwan recalls the night militant forces, known interchangeably to locals as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) or the Janjaweed, stormed his village – destroying his home, his car, and every possession he had worked tirelessly his whole life to obtain. Ridwan watched helplessly as entire neighborhoods burned to the ground and terrified civilians were slain in the streets before eventually paying a bribe to flee the bloodshed in his homeland of Darfur, Sudan, to neighboring Chad.

“This is a purely racial war,” he continued. “This is purely based on ethnic identity, on taking our land.”

However, Ridwan’s story is just one of many told to me by members of the Masalit ethnic group those fleeing their homes in the West Darfur city of El Geneina in recent weeks. Some spoke of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) fighters arriving on horseback or motorcycles, dragging men from homes for torture and execution, indiscriminately shooting civilians and burning entire villages to the ground, rounding up girls and women for rape, in addition to rampant looting, unlawful attentions and overtaking personal homes. Frequent Human Rights Watch reports verify such atrocities.