Sudan: El-Fasher, the Massacre of Innocents Under Silence
, November 3, 2025 — El-Fasher is no longer a city. It is an open-air charnel house. A week after its fall on October 26, 2025, the capital of North Darfur has become a symbol of a genocide filmed live, documented by satellites, but ignored by chanceries.
By La Rédaction · Port-au-Prince · · 4 min read · Updated 24 April 2026
Translated from French — AI-assisted and reviewed by the editorial team. The French version is authoritative. Read the original · About our translation policy
Sudan, November 3, 2025 — El-Fasher is no longer a city. It is an open-air charnel house.
A week after its fall on October 26, 2025, the capital of North Darfur has become a symbol of a genocide filmed live, documented by satellites, but ignored by chanceries. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary militia descended from the infamous Janjaweed, took possession of the city after eighteen months of siege. What has been happening there since defies human imagination: summary executions, mass rapes, looting, mass disappearances. “Blood is visible from space,” NBC News summarizes. And yet, the Western media space remains strangely empty. A methodical and documented massacre Testimonies concur: the RSF opened fire on fleeing civilians, crushed families under trucks, and shot children at point-blank range. “Before my eyes, a soldier shot my son and ordered me to leave…” Madiha Al-Tom Bashir, a refugee in Tawila, confided to Sudan Tribune. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report is damning: absence of massive population movement (proof that the majority of civilians are dead or captured), piles of bodies observed by satellite, traces of blood gradually erased. A planned, industrial erasure.
In El-Fasher, the RSF did not just take a city; they attempted to erase a people. Twenty years after the Darfur massacres, the same militias, the same crimes, the same impunity.
But this time, no Hollywood outcry, no humanitarian concert, no “Save Darfur” on TV screens. The world has a short memory and a selective conscience.
The New York Times reminds us: the RSF are the direct descendants of the Arab Janjaweed militias, responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people in the 2000s. At the time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Omar al-Bashir for genocide. Today, it is still “investigating.” Meanwhile, the same paramilitary forces sow death, this time with assumed regional support: the United Arab Emirates, according to many local experts, powerful financiers of the militia, but also strategic allies of Washington and Paris.
International hypocrisy has never been so blatant. After El-Fasher, it is Kordofan’s turn to be engulfed by war.
The UN warns: more than 36,000 civilians have fled in one week, while famine spreads.
The cities of Bara, Um Rawaba, Kadugli are becoming new theaters of executions, bombings, and kidnappings. Women, in particular, are “deliberately targeted,” according to a joint report by OCHA and UN Women.
Raped, abducted, reduced to sexual slavery, some are released after months of detention, often pregnant. Others die in captivity. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirms: 56% of sexual violence victims in South Darfur were assaulted by men in uniform.
The healthcare system, already in agony, is collapsing. Survivors have neither care nor justice. Indifference as a weapon Silence has become the complicity of the 21st century.
While massacres unfold on social media, no Western capital has imposed serious sanctions or an arms embargo.
Not even a clear Security Council resolution. Negotiations led by the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates are at a standstill because these same powers are both judges and parties, arms suppliers and war financiers.
France, a strategic partner of Abu Dhabi, remains silent.
The African Union remains powerless.
And the media, absorbed by Gaza or Ukraine, relegate Sudan to the bottom of the news feed as if the hierarchy of deaths depended on geography. “Free Sudan”: the rare voices that rise A few rare political and cultural figures are trying to break the wall of silence. French MP Nadège Abomangoli tweeted: “For two years, the war has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world: 13 million displaced, half the population starving. #FreeSudan” Rapper La Fouine joined his voice to that of oppressed peoples: “A thought to all oppressed peoples 🤍 #FreeCongo #FreePalestine #FreeSudan #FreeLebanon” And the Vice-President of the National Assembly, Clémence Guetté, calls for
“an immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and unconditional humanitarian access.” But these voices remain isolated in the face of an international system saturated with cynicism. El-Fasher is not just a humanitarian tragedy.
It is a mass crime, ethnic cleansing, a moral failure of the international community. The world promised “Never again” after Rwanda, after Srebrenica, after the first Darfur. And yet, the flames return, women are raped, villages razed, children executed.
It is no longer satellites that should bear witness, but consciences. In El-Fasher, blood is visible from space.
But it should especially be visible in our eyes, our streets, our voices.
For history will judge the executioners less than those who looked away.
A week after its fall on October 26, 2025, the capital of North Darfur has become a symbol of a genocide filmed live, documented by satellites, but ignored by chanceries. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary militia descended from the infamous Janjaweed, took possession of the city after eighteen months of siege. What has been happening there since defies human imagination: summary executions, mass rapes, looting, mass disappearances. “Blood is visible from space,” NBC News summarizes. And yet, the Western media space remains strangely empty. A methodical and documented massacre Testimonies concur: the RSF opened fire on fleeing civilians, crushed families under trucks, and shot children at point-blank range. “Before my eyes, a soldier shot my son and ordered me to leave…” Madiha Al-Tom Bashir, a refugee in Tawila, confided to Sudan Tribune. The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab report is damning: absence of massive population movement (proof that the majority of civilians are dead or captured), piles of bodies observed by satellite, traces of blood gradually erased. A planned, industrial erasure.
In El-Fasher, the RSF did not just take a city; they attempted to erase a people. Twenty years after the Darfur massacres, the same militias, the same crimes, the same impunity.
But this time, no Hollywood outcry, no humanitarian concert, no “Save Darfur” on TV screens. The world has a short memory and a selective conscience.
The New York Times reminds us: the RSF are the direct descendants of the Arab Janjaweed militias, responsible for the deaths of 300,000 people in the 2000s. At the time, the International Criminal Court (ICC) indicted Omar al-Bashir for genocide. Today, it is still “investigating.” Meanwhile, the same paramilitary forces sow death, this time with assumed regional support: the United Arab Emirates, according to many local experts, powerful financiers of the militia, but also strategic allies of Washington and Paris.
International hypocrisy has never been so blatant. After El-Fasher, it is Kordofan’s turn to be engulfed by war.
The UN warns: more than 36,000 civilians have fled in one week, while famine spreads.
The cities of Bara, Um Rawaba, Kadugli are becoming new theaters of executions, bombings, and kidnappings. Women, in particular, are “deliberately targeted,” according to a joint report by OCHA and UN Women.
Raped, abducted, reduced to sexual slavery, some are released after months of detention, often pregnant. Others die in captivity. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) confirms: 56% of sexual violence victims in South Darfur were assaulted by men in uniform.
The healthcare system, already in agony, is collapsing. Survivors have neither care nor justice. Indifference as a weapon Silence has become the complicity of the 21st century.
While massacres unfold on social media, no Western capital has imposed serious sanctions or an arms embargo.
Not even a clear Security Council resolution. Negotiations led by the United States, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Emirates are at a standstill because these same powers are both judges and parties, arms suppliers and war financiers.
France, a strategic partner of Abu Dhabi, remains silent.
The African Union remains powerless.
And the media, absorbed by Gaza or Ukraine, relegate Sudan to the bottom of the news feed as if the hierarchy of deaths depended on geography. “Free Sudan”: the rare voices that rise A few rare political and cultural figures are trying to break the wall of silence. French MP Nadège Abomangoli tweeted: “For two years, the war has plunged Sudan into one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world: 13 million displaced, half the population starving. #FreeSudan” Rapper La Fouine joined his voice to that of oppressed peoples: “A thought to all oppressed peoples 🤍 #FreeCongo #FreePalestine #FreeSudan #FreeLebanon” And the Vice-President of the National Assembly, Clémence Guetté, calls for
“an immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and unconditional humanitarian access.” But these voices remain isolated in the face of an international system saturated with cynicism. El-Fasher is not just a humanitarian tragedy.
It is a mass crime, ethnic cleansing, a moral failure of the international community. The world promised “Never again” after Rwanda, after Srebrenica, after the first Darfur. And yet, the flames return, women are raped, villages razed, children executed.
It is no longer satellites that should bear witness, but consciences. In El-Fasher, blood is visible from space.
But it should especially be visible in our eyes, our streets, our voices.
For history will judge the executioners less than those who looked away.
