The Masalit people once lived under a sultanate in West Darfur, most of which was incorporated into Sudan more than 100 years ago.
They are predominately Muslims and have accused successive Sudanese governments of promoting "Arabism" - overlooking them for basic services such as education and health.
There are concerns that attacks by the RSF and Arab militias against the Masalit community could result in a repeat of the 2003 Darfur killings, when 300,000 people were killed by the Janjaweed militias, who later grew into the RSF.
The UN has already received reports of Arab militia targeting Masalit men and said the conflict has taken on an "ethnic dimension".
We went towards the forest graveyard to bury the bodies. But the RSF did not allow us to do so. Under the orders of the RSF, the driver of the truck was ordered to dump the bodies in a pit," Maalim says, adding that the RSF ordered them to leave the area afterwards.
"They should have been buried according to Muslim rituals. We should have held prayers for them. But the RSF insisted that they were discarded like garbage."
The families say members of non-Arab communities were targeted. They describe being stopped at RSF checkpoints and asked about their ethnicity. They told us they were too frightened to say they were Masalit in case they were killed.
Darfur's Arab and Black African communities have been at loggerheads for years - with the worst violence erupting two decades ago when non-Arabs took up arms accusing the government of discrimination.
The RSF was born out of the notorious Janjaweed Arab militia, which brutally suppressed the rebellion, killing hundreds of thousands of people. The group was accused of widespread atrocities and ethnic killings, described as the first genocide of the 21st Century.
"I wish we could have joined Chad instead of Sudan," said Saad Bahar Addin, who holds the title of sultan of Dar Massalit, a vast area that stretches along the border of the two countries.
Dar Massalit is in West Darfur State, but some parts of it are in eastern Chad as a result of the boundaries that were drawn up during the colonial era.
Most of the sultanate was incorporated into Sudan 100 years ago - in 1922 - following an agreement between its then leader, Sultan Bahar Addin, the French government and the British administration that ruled the rest of Sudan.
By Allah, these people are animals.Sudan conflict: 'I saw bodies dumped in Darfur mass grave'
An eyewitness tells the BBC he saw dozens of bodies being dumped from a truck by a paramilitary group.www.bbc.com
By Allah, these people are animals.
I know you have an agenda so there's no point quoting you but the janjaweed was created to fight rebels. Khartoum did not instruct them to kill civilians.While their actions in Khartoum-Omdurman are bad, their actions in Darfur are unspeakably heinous; the people of Darfur have endured so much more, and it wasn't too long ago that Khartoum was supporting the Janjaweed against the people of Darfur.
I know you have an agenda so there's no point quoting you but the janjaweed was created to fight rebels.
Khartoum did not instruct them to kill civilians.
Lol when did I justify land theft? You're the one that kept mentioning that kinga kinfu land or whatever it's called. It's ironic how you're obsessed with the military/RSF when your own folks massacred thousands of Nuer in 2013. Heck even in the North-South war your folks were raping and killing non-Dinka Southerners. Guess janjaweed aren't they only animals huh?We all have agendas.
Your agenda is to rationalise and/or justify certain 'Government' actions (land theft of large territories) and to pathalogise people as having a victim mentality for being angry at such actions.
Do you actually believe that?
You come from the East, no? People in your region also created rebellions and made an alliance with the SPLA (through the NDA) in the mid 90s, when the North-South war was at its most intense; the East hosted as much as 8k SPLA troops, so why wasn't a similar response taken there?
Khartoum deployed regular troops to the East to contain that rebellion and had more than 3x the number of troops in the East as it had in Darfur.
Lol when did I justify land theft?
Asaana:
They would’ve kept their land had they been loyal to the regime, but cute trying to racialize it like a typical westernized African.
You're the one that kept mentioning that kinga kinfu land or whatever it's called.
It's ironic how you're obsessed with the military/RSF when your own folks massacred thousands of Nuer in 2013. Heck even in the North-South war your folks were raping and killing non-Dinka Southerners. Guess janjaweed aren't they only animals huh?
The East is very diverse, my tribe never rebelled - in fact many of us hold prestigious positions in Khartoum.
Anyways didn't you say you were done with this topic? Yet you keep bringing it up for some reason. It's time to get a grip and move on, maybe focus on your own nation?
I'm not reading all thatThat was your attempt to flip it back at us; you claimed that Khartoum wouldn't have annexed Lebanon size, resource rich-mineral territories if only we had been loyal -- even though the annexations precede our first armed movements by many years.
We actually did try to work with Sudanese Arabs as far back as the 1800s, only to be backstabbed, so that argument was ignorant and obscene
It's called Kafia Kingi and it's literally the size of a small Nation; Ibrahim Abboud annexed it from the South.
I made references to ethnic groups being deprived of large ancestral territories (lands equivalent to small Nations) and you obscenely responded by speaking of individuals toiling away in Gezira in order to purchase small plots of farmland on the other side of the bloody Country; and framed that as not having a victim mentality.
If your ethnic group was deprived of ancestral lands thousands of km2 in size, and up to an area the size of Lebanon (in the case of the Fertit); and millions died defending that and other such ancestral territories, you don't have a victim mentality... it's a bloody reality.
I don't even know why you made such ridiculous and obscene arguments.
I've never tried to justify such actions; the SPLA was by far the largest armed faction in the South and committed more crimes than any other Southern outfit, even in Dinka areas.
The SAF sparked wars that claimed 2.8 million lives in the South, Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile and Darfur, so it's in a category of its own.
The Beja rebelled as did even the Rashaida, so your rhetoric makes a lot more sense now.
I told you before, I identify with all Nilo-Saharan groups and will defend them when they are attacked.
Maybe you should refrain from demeaning entire Nilo-Saharan groups and not characterise their very understandable actions as animalistic impulses, rather than actions that are rooted in legitimate and pertinent historical grievances.