the remains of at least 87 people of the Malasit ethnic group and others have been buried in a mass grave on the outskirts of El Geneina, the capital of the Sudanese region of Western Darfur after being assassinated on apparent orders from the paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces (FAR), according to evidence obtained by the UN.
The villagers were forced to place the bodies in the grave, denying the victims a dignified funeral in the town’s cemetery, the UN Human Rights Office said.
The FAR have been facing each other since last April with the Sudanese Army, in a conflict that has its main foci in the capital Khartoum, and in the Darfur region, bordering Chad.
The massacre would have been committed between June 13 and 21 and the perpetrators would be members of the FAR and militias that support them in the dispute for power that confronts them with the Army, with which they had previously collaborated in a coup d’état which ended in 2019 with the democratic transition in which Sudan was believed to be embarking.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, demanded that the RSF leaders stop these killings and end all actions aimed at inflaming hatred against certain ethnic groups.
“I am appalled by the lack of respect in the way the dead, their families and communities are treated. There must be a full investigation into these murders and the perpetrators must be punished,” he added.
Among the corpses there are seven that correspond to women and an equal amount to children.
The The UN indicated that it has credible information indicating that several of the victims died in the wave of violence that followed the assassination of the governor of West Darfur while he was in custody by the paramilitary group.
According to the indications, several died because they were not allowed to receive medical attention.
Türk asked the FAR and other groups associated with them to allow the collection of the remains and their evacuation to give them a proper burial.
For this, it also asked them to record all the information related to the victims, including photographs and their location in the common grave, in order to identify them and return their remains to their families, and that in case they do not agree with doing so allows humanitarian workers to carry out this task.
EFE
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