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Twice a week, a collection of females come together at an unremarkable residence in Ardamata, located on the outskirts of Geneina in Sudan’s West Darfur state. They share their tales, shed tears, and sip on coffee.
The women, who work or used to work in education, are all survivors of an ethnically targeted campaign of rape and sexual abuse carried out by fighters from Arab militias backed by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group on 5 November, after the fall of the army garrison in Ardamata.
The majority of individuals targeted by the rape campaign belonged to the Masalit community, an ethnic African tribe with darker skin. This community was the dominant group in Geneina before they were forced to flee due to conflict that started in April of last year.
The founder of the group for survivors, whose real name is Mariam Abdulkarim, used to be a high school teacher and of Arab descent. Despite lacking funding or formal training, she started the group. According to her, she was sexually assaulted by a group of men on November 5th when they noticed her with her three-year-old son, who has a darker complexion due to her divorced husband.
During an interview in her kitchen, Abdulkarim recounted being threatened with the words, “You gave yourself to that slave, so now it’s our turn or we will kill your son.” She was cooking rice with dried meat over coals at the time.
She pleaded for the individuals to spare her son, but one of them issued an ultimatum, stating “either you or your son.” Overwhelmed with fear, she sacrificed herself in place of her son. Tears fell down her face as she shared her story, revealing her struggles to cope with the trauma. Despite her pain, she found solace in tears, finding them to be healing.
According to Abdulkarim, the men who committed the gang-rape returned the next morning and warned her that they would abduct her children. She pleaded with them to spare her children, but they forced her to gather all her possessions and place them into their vehicles, as she demonstrated by pointing to the now vacant room.
The Guardian has spoken with numerous individuals, primarily women but also some men, from the Ardamata region who reported being victims of rape, unwanted touching, or other forms of sexual harassment during the month of November. According to those interviewed, the fighters who arrived at their homes after the garrison was taken could be classified into three groups: those who came with the intention of raping, those who came with the intention of killing, and those who came with the intention of looting, sometimes accompanied by their spouses. Leaders of the traditional Arab community in the area have refuted these accusations of rape.
The group of men seeking to kill were searching for individuals referred to as “comrades” by Abdulkarim. This term is used to describe members of Masalit self-defence groups who are armed. These groups have been linked to multiple instances of rape against students residing in a university dorm located in Geneina in April of the previous year. The leaders of these groups did not respond to requests for comment.
In April, Sudan was thrown into disarray as longstanding tensions between its military, headed by Gen Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, erupted into violent clashes on the streets of Khartoum.
Violence expanded to different regions in the country, however, in Sudan’s Darfur area it manifested differently: the RSF engaged in savage assaults against African civilians, specifically targeting the Masalit ethnicity. The paramilitary group is a continuation of the Janjaweed militia, who launched a campaign of burning down villages in the Darfur region over 20 years ago.
The Associated Press obtained a report on March 1st from UN experts who revealed that there is a prevalent issue of sexual violence being committed by the RSF and its allied forces. The panel of experts shared a specific incident where women and girls were raped by RSF members in a storage facility under the control of the force.
Zahra Adam, the director of a women’s center located in a refugee camp in Adré, located across the border in Chad, reported to the Guardian that the individuals involved had entered the facility in search of sustenance. She stated, “They were experiencing hunger and they entered the facility to access food, but unfortunately, all of them were subjected to sexual assault.”
A woman, 27, who escaped to Adré reported being sexually assaulted by members of an Arab militia residing in her community in Geneina in June. “I experienced significant blood loss during the assault and the perpetrators assumed I had passed away,” she disclosed. “This is why they refrained from further sexual assault.”
A woman of Arab descent reported being sexually assaulted in her own home after her perpetrators discovered she was married to a dark-skinned African man through a wedding photo. “I pleaded with them, ‘why are you doing this? I am your relative, if I were in danger, I would turn to you for protection’,” the woman recalled. “Their response was, ‘you should seek help from your comrades, since you are the wife of one’.”
The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights in Sudan, Volker Türk, stated this month that the use of sexual violence, such as rape, as a weapon of war has been a prominent and repulsive aspect of the ongoing crisis since its inception.
He stated that his team has recorded 60 instances of sexual violence related to the conflict, with a minimum of 120 individuals affected throughout the country. He described these numbers as significantly lower than the actual occurrences.
According to Türk, individuals wearing RSF uniforms and those associated with the RSF were identified as responsible for 81% of the recorded incidents.
According to a representative from the United Nations Population Fund, the negative stigma surrounding gender-based violence (GBV) results in the reported number of rape victims being significantly lower than the actual amount. The spokesperson also added that GBV survivors face serious and enduring effects on their physical and mental well-being, including injuries, unintended pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, and, in some tragic cases, death.
After the garrison fell, Abdulkarim offered her home as a shelter for her neighbors, hoping that her Arab ethnicity would provide them with protection.
Despite her efforts to conceal him under her bed, one man unfortunately lost his life in her home. However, she was able to protect other women from experiencing sexual assault.
Abdulkarim recounted, “I provided refuge to a group of young women who sought shelter in my home. In order to protect them, I asked other women here to breast-feed their infants. This deceived the attackers into thinking these women were married, and they left them unharmed.”
Source: theguardian.com
