Sudan Siege - British youth call on Pope Leo to speak out

The youth meeting

Young British Sudanese are urging Pope Leo to press the international community to take robust action to stop the killing in Sudan. At a meeting in London, Sudanese Diaspora expressed horror that the United Arab Emirates was sending UK-made weapons to Sudan. This follows reports to the UN Security Council detailing how British military equipment has reached the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) besieging El Fasher in Darfur.

At a weekend meeting organised by the human rights group, Waging Peace, dozens of young people, many born in the UK to refugee parents, urged Pope Leo to continue his appeals to diplomats to respond to the humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan.

In the week since the Rapid Support Forces (the former Janjaweed militia) captured El Fasher, its soldiers have posted atrocity videos, confirming satellite evidence showing mass graves. For more than 500 days, the RSF militia had besieged the city of 260,000 people, preventing food entering, as they shell civilian infrastructure. On Sunday October 26th, the last Sudanese Armed Forces garrison fell and the army abandoned the citizens to their fate.

The RSF has built a mud wall encircling the city, and there are multiple credible reports of the systematic elimination of Black African ethnic groups living there. Militiamen have posted videos of killing 460 people in a maternity hospital, and it is thought that at least 3,000 people have died since the city fell.

David Miliband of the International Rescue Committee said in a briefing to donors that his charity, based in Tawila, 70 kilometres from El Fasher, stood ready to receive people escaping from the siege. It is estimated that 60,000 have fled the city in recent days. However, few people have arrived in Tawila, leading Miliband to fear they have been killed while trying to escape.

Over the weekend, the RSF has also bombed Bara in North Kordofan and conducted a drone strike on an internally displaced persons' camp in South Kordofan. Both regions are home to Sudan's Black African ethnic groups.

The British government now faces calls to stop selling weapons to the Unted Arab Emirates (the UAE) which allegedly backs the RSF. In 2024, the UN Security Council tasked its panel of experts to investigate the flow of weapons into Sudan in breach of the long-standing arms embargo on Darfur. The panel found there have been multiple flights from the UAE to Sudan, and equipment supplied to the UAE by countries such as the UK has been found in Darfur.

When asked by MPs on October 29th why British equipment (including small arms target systems and armoured personnel carrier engines) has been found in Darfur, the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, said that the UK's export regulations were "extremely strong." The FCDO minister Stephen Doughty, also resisted Liberal Democrats' calls for an arms embargo on the UAE. UK Government export data reveals that the UK sold £750m worth of arms to the UAE between 2019 and 2023.

Proposing the embargo, the Lib Dem MP Monica Harding said, "The possibility that British military equipment is contributing to the horrors occurring there, and aiding the carnage caused by the RSF, is horrific. The UK must cease all arms sales to the UAE immediately - until we can confirm without a doubt that no British weapons are going via the UAE to the RSF."

The UK has long had a lucrative relationship with the oil-rich Gulf kingdom, with the City of London managing UAE investments. The emirate is reputed to own more London property than the Duke of Westminster, in addition to Manchester City football team.

International efforts to stop the fighting have so far yielded little. The diplomatic "Quad" (the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the USA) have been meeting in Washington DC to discuss the violence in Sudan. The UAE is reported to have vetoed Quad proposals for a ceasefire between the RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. Since 2016, the UAE has spent $154m on lobbyists in Washington. Egypt and Saudi Arabia are known to support the Sudanese Armed Forces.

On several occasions recently, Pope Leo has appealed to the international community to respond to what he called the "humanitarian catastrophe" in Sudan. It is believed that 150,000 Sudanese have been killed so far since the war began in April 2023.

LINK

Waging Peace: https://wagingpeace.info/