What’s Happening in Sudan “is a tragedy”: Catholic Bishop Denounces Atrocities, Urges Global Media Attention

According to the report, “Dozens of bodies lie strewn on the floor of a building as militiamen move through, checking that no one is still alive.”

The October 30 analysis, which Ahmed Gouja, a Darfur-based journalist and rights monitor authored, cites a video recording in which the apparent “only survivor is shot dead.”

In another video, fighters shout cries of victory and “all around them lie corpses in the sand, as vehicles burn in the distance – presumably vehicles that those people had tried to use to escape.”

“In a third video, a different group of fighters force six men to lie face down on the ground. A captive is kicked in the head, as the group are called slaves and ordered to bleat like sheep,” the analysis that accompanied Bishop Carlassare’s message to ACI Africa further recounts.

The analysis describes “a deluge of shocking videos – mostly filmed and posted online by RSF fighters – together with satellite images” that document the scale of the atrocities.

The report cites civil society groups, whose officials “believe thousands of people have been killed over recent days, including nearly 500 at the city’s only partially functioning hospital” and that “the killings have been so extensive that blood and dead bodies are now visible from space.”

According to the analysis, warnings about the atrocities were ignored. “What makes matters worse is that the crimes committed in El Fasher were long telegraphed and long foreseen: For more than 500 days, the RSF subjected the city to a brutal siege in an attempt to dislodge the national army – supported by allied armed groups – from its last major holdout in Darfur.”

In another report, a medical group and researchers have confirmed that “scores of people” have been killed in attacks by RSF on El Fasher.

In the October 29 report, the Sudan Doctors Network is cited confirming that at least 1,500 people had been killed in just three days as civilians were attempting to flee the captured El Fasher in what the group described as “a true genocide”.

“The massacres the world is witnessing today are an extension of what occurred in el-Fasher more than a year and a half ago, when over 14,000 civilians were killed through bombing, starvation, and extrajudicial executions,” the group has been quoted as saying.

The Sudan Doctors Network also reportedly said that the deadly attacks are part of a “deliberate and systematic campaign of killing and extermination”.

In yet another report, Bishop Carlassare is quoted describing the latest violence and killings of the Sudan war, which broke out on 15 April 2023, as “forgotten”.

“It is a forgotten war because the people are really forgotten,” the Italian-born member of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus (MCCJ) lamented in an October 30 October 30 OSV News report.

He further lamented that while the international community has turned a blind eye to the violent conflict, “it’s not forgotten for the weapon merchants, who are making a lot of profit out of this war.”

Bishop Carlassare expressed concern over illegal exploitation of natural resources, especially gold, in the Northeastern African nation by the warring groups to fund the war.

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“They are stealing twice from the people. They are stealing peace and then the natural resources. We are witnessing the exploitation of these resources to continue the conflict,” the pioneer Bishop of South Sudan’s newest Diocese, who doubles as the Apostolic Administrator of the country’s Rumbek Catholic Diocese, where he started his Episcopal Ministry in March 2022 bemoaned.

In the October 30 OSV report, he said that the Church will not relent in her efforts to advocate for the end of the violence and atrocities, and added, “I hope the diplomacy of the Vatican can bring the people together and especially speak for those that are most abandoned.”

“The church could make the Sudanese situation more and more known, especially since the people are living in misery, suffering poverty, and lacking most basic services,” Bishop Carlassare has been quoted as saying.

On October 2, Catholic movements and various religious entities joined more than 100 civil society organizations and humanitarian actors in calling for the protection of civilians in El Fasher.

Bishop Carlassare’s renewed appeal echoes these calls, urging the international community not to turn a blind eye to the suffering of the Sudanese people.