At an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council, Türk says that repeated attempts were made to warn of an impending bloodbath during the 18 months that al-Fashir was under siege. The international community had every opportunity to prevent what is now happening, he points out.
"It must stand up to these atrocities, an unbridled brutality that aims to subjugate and control an entire population," says Türk.
When armed forces from RSF entered the city the other week, reports quickly emerged of executions of civilians, ethnic cleansing, rapes and, among other things, a massacre at a hospital where several hundred people were killed.
A task force has been tasked with investigating and recording crimes committed in al-Fashir. Investigator Mona Rishmawi told the council that “much of al-Fashir is now a crime scene” and that they have already collected evidence of “unspeakable atrocities, deliberate killings, torture, rape, kidnapping for ransom, arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances.”
