19 December 2023

The undersigned organizations draw attention of the international community to the growing hate crimes and killings on ethnic and tribal grounds in Sudan. The shocking video footages of tens of young men from Kordofan and Darfur that were paraded on the streets of Wad Madani (200km south of Khartoum) on Saturday, 16 December 2023 and later executed by the security forces and their dead bodies exposed in public, are the tip of the iceberg. These victims are unarmed civilians, some of them lived in the area for years and are not known to be politically active. Their only crime is that they hail from Darfur and Kordofan and belong to tribes such as the Rizzegat, Misseriya, Fur, Zaghawa, Massalit and a host of other smaller tribes that are falsely accused by the army of being members of the Rapid Support Forces.

Credible reports indicate that hundreds of young men originating from Darfur and Kordofan are arbitrarily arrested by the Sudanese military intelligence and the General Intelligence Service and summarily executed in major cities in the northern and central regions of Sudan such as Port Sudan, Kassala and Kosti. Such frequent arrests and executions campaigns are particularly severe and violent in major cities in the River Nile and the Northern State such as Dongola, Shendi and Atbara. These killings are linked to incitement to ethnic violence and the calls for expulsion from these regions of all citizens originating from Darfur and Kordofan, especially gold miners and petty traders that left their regions of origin due to internal wars.

Calls for ethnic hatred, racially motivated killings or the expulsion of certain ethnicities from the country have been growing during the last 3 years, particularly through Sudanese animated social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp. Of special concern is the absence of any response from the Sudanese authorities to these reprehensible criminal offensives, which constitute serious threats to Sudan’s fragile social fabric and future. The historical apathy of the Sudanese authorities towards these criminal acts is flagrant violation of the country’s obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination to which Sudan acceded on 21 March 1977.

Sudan is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious country and any unwarranted calls for ethnic hatred and intolerance will foster racial and tribal bipolarization and complicate the ongoing armed conflict at the detriment of national unity. Sudan’s long experience with internal wars in is due to the proliferation of racism and intolerance and a manifestation of the country’s ills. It is our belief that any solution for Sudan’s crisis must provide for a Social Contract that celebrates and respects the country’s ethnic and racial diversity on equal footing, and unites its people with their myriad backgrounds, as the first step to address the growing division of the Sudanese society along ethnic lines. Finally, we recommend that:

1. The warring parties in Sudan should respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, especially regarding the treatment of civilians and that the Sudan military intelligence and the General Intelligence Service put an immediate halt to their policy of ethnically motivated extra-judicial killing and ill-treatment of innocent civilians. All individuals that ordered the commission of such crimes on ethnic or tribal motives should be held accountable and the victims and their families should be compensated.

• Any peace deal in Sudan should envisage a national campaign on tolerance and coexistence as part of a multidisciplinary National Plan of Action to Combat Racism and Discrimination in order to fulfill its obligations under the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, which were agreed upon at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Measures entailed in such a Plan of Action should effectively address the historical and the ongoing injustices and heal the wounds of the past.

Signed:

1. Africa Centre for Human Rights, Khartoum
2. African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies, Banjul
3. African Organisation on Rights and Development, Kampala
4. Beja Bar Association, Khartoum
5. Centre du Commerce International pour le Développement, Geneva
6. Civic Forces Alliance (CFA-Sudan), Khartoum
7. Community Development Association, Khartoum
8. Confederation of Sudanese Civil Society Organisations, Khartoum
9. Darfur Bar Association, Khartoum
10. Darfur Civil Society Forum, Khartoum
11. Darfur Network for Human Rights, Kampala
12. Darfur Victims Support Organisation
13. Darfur Women Action Group, Washington
14. Darfur Women Platform, Khartoum
15. Emergency Lawyers, Khartoum
16. Governance Programming Overseas, Khartoum
17. Human Rights Advocacy Network for Democracy (HAND), Khartoum
18. Justice Africa – Sudan, Khartoum
19. New Horizons Foundation, Juba
20. Nubia for Prosperity (NFP), Khartoum
21. Omar Al-Mukhtar Human Rights Institute, Geneva
22. Pan-African Congress (PAC-SD), Khartoum
23. Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme (RADDHO), Dakar
24. Save Sudan, Khartoum
25. Sudan Documentation Centre, Geneva
26. Sudan Human Rights Network, Washington
27. Sudan Linguistic Circle, Khartoum
28. Sudanese Civil Society Initiative, Khartoum
29. Sudanese Human Rights Defenders Group, Khartoum
30. Sudanese Secular Society for Human Rights, Khartoum
31. Sudanese Women against Violence, Khartoum
32. The Regional Centre for Training and Development of Civil Society (RCDCS), Khartoum
33. Wind Organisation for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Khartoum  
34. Zarga Organization for Rural Development, Khartoum

Media contact: Mr. Abdelrahman Gasim+251 996337461 and +256 751907777 (WhatsApp)