When Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) took over most of the country’s capital Khartoum in the early days of the war, the youth-led civil society initiative Hadhreen kept its food kitchens – a vital lifeline for those in need – open.It was risky. Countless examples of RSF violence against civilians and looting have been recorded since Sudan’s war started in April 2023.
Hadhreen didn’t escape that violence. A spokesperson described to Al Jazeera an episode in August 2024 when the RSF looted supplies from a kitchen and arrested the supervisor.
The supervisor’s fate was unknown until after the RSF was driven out of Khartoum by the Sudanese army on March 27.
“We discovered that the detained supervisor – whose only ‘offence’ was providing meals to helpless citizens through the kitchen – was martyred in the detention centres of the Rapid Support Forces,” Hadhreen told Al Jazeera.
The army’s recapture of Khartoum last month appeared for some to be a turning point in the devastating two-year war that has torn Sudan apart since it erupted on April 15, 2023. Advertisement
But it is not just the RSF that has attacked civil society activists on the ground.
Earlier this year, a number of workers in Emergency Response Rooms (ERR), grassroots networks that have led the humanitarian response since the war erupted, told Al Jazeera some of their colleagues had been killed by the army or army-aligned groups in Khar …
