The Post's investigation shows 'bigotry' behind 2023 massacre in Darfur
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Well, we're going to take a look now at one particular massacre of the Sudan War. It took
00:06place in June last year and is considered one of the first episodes of ethnically motivated
00:11violence in the conflict. Now, what makes the killings unusual and why we're talking
00:16about them now is that it's rare to get this kind of footage out of Sudan. The reporting
00:22is a product of a joint investigation by Sky News, Lighthouse Reports, Le Monde and The
00:28Washington Post. And Catherine Hureld from The Washington Post, she's their East Africa
00:33Bureau Chief, joins me live now from Nairobi. Thank you for speaking to us today.
00:40Thank you for the opportunity.
00:42First of all, I want to play our viewers two clips of the aftermath of an execution. This
00:50was, as I say, in June last year, on the 3rd of June, it took place in a place called Kasab
00:56in Darfur. Let's start by just taking a look at that footage.
01:25And Catherine, just tell us then, what is it that we are looking at in those images?
01:31Who attacked whom and what happened?
01:35So you're seeing the aftermath of an attack on Kasab camp, which housed many displaced
01:40families who'd fled the previous conflict in Darfur. One of those clips shows the bodies
01:46of five brothers, who witnesses say were hiding in their house, and they were dragged out
01:52by uniformed RSF forces. They had their hands down behind their back, and they were shot
01:58dead. We spoke to somebody who witnessed the mother pleading for the lives of her five sons.
02:05Before they were taken out and killed, she offered to trade her life for theirs,
02:10but she was clubbed with a gun butt and her sons were taken away.
02:14And it's taken over a year, Catherine, for this footage to come to light now.
02:19What kinds of challenges did you and your colleagues face trying to
02:25tell this story and get this information out?
02:29It's very difficult to get into Sudan, first of all. The military has only started letting
02:36people in this year. It's been very difficult to make contact with people because phone lines
02:42are down in many places, and so is internet. Sometimes there's Starlink links, but people
02:51very much fear to send things over those because they're often surveilled. So sometimes they want
02:56to send things out in a thumb drive, or sometimes it might just be a case of they've now crossed
03:00the border and they can get it to somebody. So it's quite difficult to get things out of Sudan.
03:06But there is also a lot of evidence online. Human Rights Watch has just published a report
03:11about this showing things like torture, extrajudicial executions, dismemberment of bodies.
03:19There's quite a lot of evidence out there, but we had several videos from the same incidents.
03:24And in the article that you wrote that accompanies this footage that you've been working on,
03:30you talk about the kind of slaughter that we played that clip of being routine in this war.
03:38Is what you've shown us today the tip of the iceberg in terms of
03:43ethnically motivated violence now in Darfur?
03:48Unfortunately, the violence in Sudan has been massively underreported. The United States
03:53estimates 150,000 people have been killed so far. It's happening on a daily basis.
04:00It can be the shelling of a crowded marketplace, the shelling of hospital,
04:07this kind of slaughter in which civilians are taken out and killed from their homes.
04:13A lot of it does seem to have an ethnic basis, not all of it. But several of the survivors of
04:19this particular killing said that those who were attacking them kept repeatedly referring
04:25to them as slaves, which is an ethnic slur there, obviously.
04:29Indeed. And as you say, what is particularly significant in this footage is the ethnically
04:34motivated nature of the massacre. Now, when viewers think of Darfur, many will think of
04:39the genocide 20 years ago carried out by groups like the Janjaweed. How does this footage
04:46compare to those events? Is there an echo here of the genocide of 20 years ago?
04:52That's certainly what people are fearing. And many people are saying there is
04:58the United Nations has come out and said that crimes like ethnic cleansing are being committed,
05:03massive sexual violence, which we also saw in the Darfur War. I first went to Darfur in 2005,
05:09I think it was. So certainly I see echoes of that. The major difference that you have now
05:16is that the military and the Janjaweed were working together in those days. And now the
05:23military is working together with the former African rebels that was fighting against the RSF,
05:30which is the sort of, you know, the RSF was formed out of the Janjaweed. So the alignments
05:38are different among the armed groups. And the RSF, the Rapid Support Forces that you just
05:42mentioned there, have responded to this footage that you and your colleagues have produced and
05:49have been reporting on. They say effectively that the ethnic motivation for these attacks were
05:55overblown or were exploited for a Western audience, and that they claim now people
05:59are actually living together peacefully in this part of Darfur. I wonder what you make of that.
06:07They are certainly living together in parts of Darfur, including in Britain.
06:12Whether it is peaceful or not, it's very difficult to say. Without visiting there,
06:18without knowing the conditions that they're living under. I'm aware of what the RSF has said.
06:26And I certainly think that there are many motivations for the violence, including
06:29conflict over resources, politics, but nobody can deny that ethnic tensions are really fueling this
06:37violence and are a significant contributor to this killing. And as you say, you know,
06:45the United States has said there is evidence of war crimes being committed now in Sudan,
06:50crimes against humanity as well. The death toll is dreadful and it is enormous. The Sudan story,
06:58though, isn't getting heard or isn't capturing the kind of public imagination in the way
07:03that it did back in the early 2000s. I wonder why you think that is. Is that because,
07:08you know, we have so many other big conflicts on the world stage right now, Gaza, Ukraine?
07:13Is it because journalists like yourself can't get access to Sudan? Why do you think we hear about it?
07:19Well, why do you think we don't hear about it enough?
07:22Sudan has always been very difficult to access, including during the last war in Darfur. I think
07:28a major difference now is we are in the era of a poli-crisis. There is Gaza, there is Ukraine,
07:35there is Sudan, there is still Somalia, South Sudan fighting in Ethiopia.
07:42There are only so many crises that people can hear about without their eyes beginning to glaze over,
07:48which is a real privilege for Western audiences to be able to turn off the TV set. Of course,
07:52millions of people don't have that luxury. A final question for you then. What should
07:57governments, the United Kingdom, the United States, be doing in the wake of this reporting
08:02like yours demonstrating the scale of ethnic violence in Sudan? Be doing to try and put
08:10pressure on the right parties to quell this dreadful violence?
08:17Well, I can't say what governments should be doing, but I can tell you what they are doing.
08:21They just attempted to hold talks in Geneva with the United States and several other actors
08:30over humanitarian access. The RSF attended those and the Sudanese military did not.
08:35But the military did finally open an access point for aid to cross over from Chad into Darfur,
08:43which can make a difference to millions of starving people. It's very difficult to put
08:49pressure on the warring parties because their backers are not Western governments.
08:55And their backers haven't been that responsive, I think, to messages from
09:03governments who would like to see a ceasefire, that they should stop fueling this conflict.
09:08Catherine Horrell talking to us there. She's the
09:11East Africa Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. Thank you.