On April 11, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) stormed the Zamzam displacement camp in Sudan’s North Darfur, burning huts and shops, executing medics, and firing at fleeing civilians.According to monitors, at least 500 people – men, women, children and the elderly – were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced.
The attack provoked global outrage, prompting the RSF to double down on propaganda it had been spreading for months about Zamzam – that it was actually a military barracks.
“Zamzam was a military zone … so the RSF decided that we should evacuate civilians,” RSF adviser Ali Musabel told Al Jazeera, without providing evidence for his claim. “We didn’t want civilians to get caught in the crossfire.”
By labelling Zamzam a military zone, the RSF was trying to apply the same model Israel uses to justify bombing hospitals and schools in the Gaza Strip, said Rifaat Makawi, a Sudanese human rights lawyer.
“This is not a coincidence: it is a deliberate practice aimed at stripping civilians of their legal protection by labelling them as combatants or instruments of war,” he told Al Jazeera. Advertisement
A template for genocide
Throughout Sudan’s civil war, the RSF has used human rights jargon and terms from international humanitarian law (IHL) – the legal framework designed to protect civilians in times of war – to carry out atrocities.
For years, Israel emp …