A force fighting Sudan’s army in a brutal civil war committed massacres and rape that amount to genocide, the Secretary of State said. The United States sanctioned its leader and financial network.
The United States declared on Tuesday that a genocide took place in Sudan, drawing fresh attention to the scale of atrocities in Africa’s largest war and singling out one side in the conflict as the perpetrators of some of the worst violence.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary group fighting Sudan’s military in a bitter civil war, and allied militias had committed acts of genocide during a fearsome wave of ethnically targeted violence in the western region of Darfur.
The Treasury Department announced a raft of financial measures intended to support the genocide determination, including sanctions that personally target the R.S.F.’s leader, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, as well as seven companies in the United Arab Emirates, the R.S.F.’s main foreign sponsor.
“The R.S.F. and allied militias have systematically murdered men and boys — even infants — on an ethnic basis, and deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence,” Mr. Blinken said in a statement. “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”
The genocide determination comes two decades after the United States took a similar step in 2004, when then Secretary of State Colin Powell determined that the Janjaweed, ruthless ethnic militias allied with Sudan’s military, had committed genocide during a vicious counterinsurgency campaign in Darfur.