For Elie Wiesel, one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust was to always speak out against emerging genocides: “How could a Jew like myself, with experiences and memories like mine, stay at home and not go to the aid of an entire people?” Already by 2023 the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum was warning about a potential genocide in the region:https://www.ushmm.org/information/press/press-releases/museum-warns-risk-of-genocide-in-darfur
The WCHC calls our attention to the horrific and tragic crisis unfolding in the Sudan, which the Washington Post calls the “world’s largest humanitarian crisis” and which has only grown in intensity and viciousness in the past weeks. This week the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) a paramilitary group engaged in murder, ethnic cleansing, torture and rape, killed 400 civilians, including 12 aid workers in the displaced persons camp of Zamzam, in the Darfur region. Terrified people fleeing on foot from the violence arrive to find there is virtually no food or clean water available. Women and girls have been gang raped and children shot openly in the streets.
The conflict has been going on for two years, with the Biden administration declaring the situation a genocide in January of this year, The current Trump Administration has declined to assert whether they believe the RSF is committing genocide. Members of congress have called for the US to stop supplying weapons to the United Arab Emirates, which is accused by the UN and American officials of supplying weapons, drones and other military assistance to the R.S.F.
In a statement the UN rights chief, Volker Türk, said the “large-scale attacks … made starkly clear the cost of inaction by the international community, despite my repeated warnings of heightened risk for civilians in the area”.
Mohamed Isman of Human Rights Watch, in response to the harrowing eye witness accounts, pleads, “International leaders should ensure that discussions to improve the humanitarian situation go hand in hand with commitments at the highest level to protect civilians.”
Will the world and the U.S. do more to intervene or will it, as so often, stand by while a genocide unfolds?