The Khartoum massacre occurred on 3 June 2019, when the armed forces of the Sudanese Transitional Military Council, headed by the Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and his deputy, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the immediate successor organisation to the Janjaweed militia, used heavy gunfire and tear gas to disperse a sit-in by protestors in Khartoum, killing over 100 people. It has been difficult to assess the actual number killed. At least forty bodies were thrown in the River Nile. Hundreds of unarmed civilians were injured, hundreds more were arrested, many families were terrorised in their home estates across Sudan, and the RSF raped more than 70 women and men. The Internet was almost completely blocked in Sudan in the days following the massacre, making it difficult to estimate the number of victims.
In October 2019, during the 39-month planned transition to democracy, an official Khartoum massacre investigation commission was created as required under Article 7. (16) of the Sudanese August 2019 Draft Constitutional Declaration, under the authority of transition period Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok. The commission is led by human rights lawyer Nabil Adib Abdalla and with no female members, to the objection of the No to Oppression against Women Initiative.
Background
Sudanese protests started in December 2018, leading to the removal of Omar al-Bashir by the military in a coup d'état, and the establishment of a Transitional Military Council (TMC) which is headed by the Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan.
Following intense protests, Awad Ibn Auf announced his resignation and said that he had chosen Lieutenant-General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan to lead the TMC. Protesters supported by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) and democratic opposition groups engaged in street demonstrations, calling on the ruling Transitional Military Council to "immediately and unconditionally" step aside in favour of a civilian-led transitional government, and urging other reforms in Sudan. For about two months the TMC engaged the SPA in dialogue and discussion on how to shift to a transitional government, disagreeing over whether the transitional government should be civilian-led or military-led. And during the official discussions, there were many attempts on the TMC’s part to disperse protesters and clear the sit-in in front of the Military HQ in Khartoum.
On 30 May, the SPA expressed concern that a lethal attack by the TMC was intended, stating that on 29 May, "two citizens including a pregnant lady were shot dead by the TMC forces." The SPA warned that military trucks of NISS, the RSF, and other state security forces were accumulating around the area of the sit-in. On 1 June, the SPA said that it had reason to believe that the TMC was "planning and working to end the peaceful sit-in at the headquarters with excessive force and violence" after three people were killed in incidents on the fringes of the demonstration during the previous week.
Massacre
On 3 June 2019, the military armed forces of the TMC headed by the Sudan Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, the succeeding front organization to the Janjaweed militia and NISS, together with other TMC forces used heavy gunfire and tear gas as well as sound bombs aiming at dispersing the sit-in killing more than 100 people with difficulties in estimating the actual number.
Estimating the number of victims was difficult in the days following the massacre because of Internet blockage and the deployment of brutal military forces across the capital. The Internet in Sudan was almost completely blocked during and following the massacre, a signature move of the TMC, on which the Janjaweed militias had a wide presence throughout Khartoum and prevented documenting the number of victims.
As of the evening of 4 June 2019, there were reports of a large number of victims in the field of the sit-in with difficulty evacuating them. There were several reports of bodies thrown into the Nile. Hundreds of unarmed civilians were injured, hundreds of unarmed citizens were arrested, and many families were terrorized in their home estates across Sudan. Seventy women and men were raped by the RSF according to doctors in Khartoum hospitals.
On 9 June, witnesses reported the smell of rotten corpses coming from drainage channels and suspected that soldiers had thrown victims there.
In total, more than 200 military vehicles were used in the attack, with more than 10,000 soldiers and other unidentified personnel in police uniforms.
Timeline
The following is a timeline of what took place in the Khartoum sit-in camp:
- 4:30 am: Janjaweed militias and NISS with other TMC forces started surveying the area of the sit-in camp in preparation for the attack.
- 4:55 am: Around 100 military vehicles belonging to Janjaweed militias, armed with heavy military firearms, including anti-aircraft weapons and carrying hundreds of armed soldiers. These soldiers were carrying weapons and sticks when they surrounded the Military HQ in Khartoum. The cars prevented the unarmed civilians from entering the Military HQ. Simultaneously, another 100 white pick-up trucks without number plates, full of soldiers in police uniforms, arrived. Other Janjaweed soldiers were also seen in huge numbers along Nile Street.
- 6:00 am – onward: The joint forces started the attack on the sit-in camp using live bullets, sound bombs and teargas, storming the civilians from all directions, leaving a narrow path for protesters to exit. The militia started burning the tents and shooting indiscriminately, leaving hundreds dead and injured and throwing many bodies into the Nile.
According to local resident and PhD student Mohammed Elnaiem, the first phase of the attack included discussion between RSF members and the regular army, and in the second phase, the army vehicles departed while RSF vehicles "drove through the barricades. Following the massacre, some bodies were recovered that wore uniforms belonging to the Sudanese Army. Activists concluded that there had been army soldiers who refused to attack the protestors or had attempted to protect them, whereupon they too had been murdered. Nahid Jabrallah attributed the murders to the RSF. After the main attack, the RSF shot wounded protestors in three Khartoum hospitals.
Sit-ins in Port Sudan, el-Gadarif and Sinja were also "raided and attacked by the RSF" on 3 June.
Mass rapes
France 24 documented evidence that the rapes of 70 women and men during the massacre were a deliberate campaign to "break the girls". Nahid Jabrallah, founder of the Sima Centre for Women and Children's Studies, and other activists and journalists, stated that there were extensive testimonies of gang rapes and other sexual violence by the RSF during the 3 June attacks. Huma, an activist, said that RSF soldiers humiliated women by asking them to remove their underwear. Online social network images showing women's underwear on a pole and a room full of women's clothing were considered "unverified" as of 20 June 2019. Jabrallah stated that "everyone was threatened with being raped if they resisted the RSF's orders."
International criminal lawyer Celine Bardet of We are not Weapons of War said that evidence gathering for the systematic use of sexual violence as a tool of war needed separate consideration to other evidence gathering, because of social stigma against women testifying about the events. Bardet said that, as of June 2019, evidence was being collected about "a fair amount of sexual violence" that might be used as evidence of an international crime, if the sexual violence were "systematic, targeted and [had] a specific objective". Activist Dalia El Roubi stated that "the symbolism behind the rape of women is very substantial, it's aimed at breaking society" and that the sexual violence of the 3 June massacre was a deliberate action by the RSF to "break" communities in a similar way to which communities were "broken" in Darfur.
Pramila Patten from the United Nations (UN) called for a UN human rights monitoring team to be sent to Sudan and for "rapes and gang rapes of protesters, women's rights defenders and women medical personnel working in hospitals near the sit-in" to stop.
Hala al-Karib, writing in Al Jazeera English, said that local activists provided systematic support for the rape victims, "[extending] their hands to the hundreds of male and female sexual violence survivors and the families of those who were killed" with "discipline and the commitment to support the survivors of violence". Al-Karib said that the activists "understood the root causes and politics behind sexual violence" and "approached sexual violence as a crime connected [to] power relations", while "not [undermining] how personal it is as a crime". Al-Karib criticised the lack of support from international "multimillion-dollar agencies and NGOs" with "fancy conference rooms to strategise in", stating that the "actors that are traditionally tasked with addressing sexual violence [remained] unable or unwilling to end Sudan's sexual violence epidemic and help its survivors achieve justice."
Victims
On 12 June 2019, the Sudanese Doctors' Syndicate published a list of 104 people that were killed on or after 3 June, including 12 children. The majority of the victims were killed by gunfire, while others were stabbed to death, burned, or had their skulls crushed after being run over by Janjaweed pick-up trucks. The list below includes the name of the victim (some unidentified), the date of death, age, hospital and cause of death as indicated by the Sudanese Doctors' Syndicate:
Responsibility
Rapid Support Forces
The military armed forces of the Transitional Military Council (TMC), including the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo ("Hemedti"), the immediate successor organisation to the Janjaweed militia, and others are widely attributed as being responsible for the attack. The Daily Beast attributed responsibility directly to RSF under Hemedti's command, based on videos, testimonies by witnesses and interviews with civilian activists. Three separate enquiries released statements to the media in late July 2019. On 27 July, an Attorney-General enquiry requested by the TMC attributed responsibility to "at least eight high-ranking officers" and stated a death toll of 87 and no rapes. On 30 July, enquiries by the Darfur Bar Association and the National Umma Party attributed responsibility directly to the TMC, confirmed the occurrences of rapes as part of the event, and stated a total death toll of 124 (from 3 to 20 June).
On 27 July, Fathelrahman Saeed, the head of a committee appointed by the Attorney-General at the request of the TMC to investigate the massacre, stated that 87 people had been killed, 168 injured, no rapes had occurred and no tents had been burnt. Saeed stated that legal cases for crimes against humanity had been launched against eight unnamed high-ranking security officers. The Sudan Forensic Doctors Union described the result of the enquiry as "poor and defective", and the FFC, the Sudanese Women's Union, the Sudanese Professionals Association and the Democratic Lawyers' Alliance rejected the report. Street protests took place in Khartoum in response to the report.
The Darfur Bar Association (DBA) created a Truth and Fact-finding Committee to investigate the massacre, primarily the incidents of rape. On 30 July, the DBA committee stated that eight rape victims were receiving psychological therapy; one in Omdurman had committed suicide as a result of the rape; one rape victim had been forced by social stigma to search for another home for her and her family. The DBA claimed that it had "ample evidence" of responsibility of TMC for the massacre and that the "decision to disband the sit-in" took place at a meeting including all TMC members, the Attorney-General, police chiefs and security directors. The DBA committee argued that the Attorney-General enquiry was neither professional, independent nor impartial.
The National Umma Party formed an enquiry committee led by Yousef El Amin. On 30 July, El Amin stated that the sit-in was disbanded by "a large military force wearing RSF uniforms and riot police" and that the massacre had been "premeditated and planned". He stated that 47 victims of the massacre died on 3 June, with a total of 124 dying from 3 to 20 June. He confirmed rapes, throwing of bodies into the Nile, and burning of tents.