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00:00 Awatef Adam was on the run, fleeing a weeks-long massacre in Sudan that targeted her tribe.
00:07 She knew that the Arab militias who were killing her people were specifically looking for men
00:12 and boys.
00:14 The 43-year-old mother of seven, whose community are the darker-skinned Masalit people, was
00:19 escaping to Chad in mid-June with three of her children, one son and two daughters.
00:27 She had left her other four with family and friends in the Sudanese city of El Janina,
00:31 a tactic she hoped would guarantee the survival of at least some of her children.
00:36 For the journey, she dressed her 12-year-old son Faiez in a headscarf and a black abaya,
00:41 the full-length robe worn by some Muslim women.
00:44 She hoped the disguise would protect him from the militiamen who were hunting for Masalit
00:48 males.
00:49 The ruse worked until they reached Shukri, a village about six miles from the Chad border.
00:56 That's where their luck ran out.
00:58 Adam said five men, two in rapid support forces uniforms and three in traditional robes, spotted
01:03 Faiez.
01:04 They surrounded him, then lifted the abaya.
01:07 He was wearing a shirt and trousers.
01:11 "They struck him in the head.
01:19 They were clubbing him with a wooden rod.
01:21 I told them not to beat him.
01:23 He's an orphan.
01:25 Immediately they hit me.
01:28 I fell down.
01:29 The beating on my head caused paralysis in my arm.
01:33 They hit me in the head.
01:34 I fell down.
01:36 My husband was struck and he tried to rescue him but couldn't.
01:40 They hit him again.
01:41 He fell down.
01:42 He was hit in the hand.
01:45 They dragged the boy away and told him to crawl.
01:48 He was crawling while they were beating him with a wooden rod."
01:53 Adam had raised Faiez from the age of three, when his mother, her sister-in-law, died.
01:58 She says the last words she heard him shout were "Mama, leave."
02:03 Reuters spoke to more than 40 mothers who described how their children, mostly boys,
02:07 were killed by Sudan's Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group known as the RSF or its
02:12 allied Arab militias.
02:14 They describe an ethnically targeted killing campaign in and around the West Darfur capital
02:19 of El Janina.
02:20 Several mothers of slain children, as well as other witnesses, say Arab militiamen made
02:25 clear why they were targeting the Masalit boys.
02:27 The militiamen wanted to be sure the children wouldn't grow up to be fighters and one day
02:32 seek revenge for the attacks on the Masalit.
02:35 The RSF didn't respond to questions from Reuters.
02:39 But in prior statements, it has said it wasn't involved in what it calls a "tribal conflict"
02:44 in El Janina.
02:45 Arab tribal leaders have also denied committing abuses and have accused the Masalit of being
02:50 the aggressors.
02:52 Saad Bahreldin is a Masalit sultan.
03:04 The way the attacks took place was well planned by professional people.
03:10 They brought people from the outside and they used very sophisticated ways to find the personal
03:14 belongings, to loot the houses and to ravage the economic and service institutions.
03:21 It's premeditated to eliminate El Janina and to annihilate the Masalit in a few days.
03:37 The Masalit were a majority in El Janina until the RSF and Arab militias forced them out
03:42 this year.
03:43 About half a million people, mostly Masalit, have fled to neighbouring Chad as a result
03:47 of the violence.
03:49 Thousands have died in the attacks.
03:52 In a Reuters report in November, Masalit women described how they were sexually assaulted
03:56 by members of the Arab-dominated RSF paramilitary and its militia allies.
04:02 But witnesses say the killing sprees have specifically targeted males of all ages, including
04:07 infants as young as six months old.
04:10 Thirty-six of the mothers interviewed by Reuters said their children were shot from close range,
04:15 33 of them boys and eight of them girls.
04:19 Others said they watched as their children were beaten to death by RSF and Arab militia
04:23 fighters.
04:24 Most of these children were killed as they fled with their mothers from El Janina to
04:28 neighbouring Chad.
04:29 En route to Chad, five survivors described seeing militiamen stop women with babies,
04:33 check the child's sex and kill it if it turned out to be a boy.
04:38 Reuters was unable to independently corroborate the details of some of the accounts for this
04:42 report.
04:43 In some cases, friends and neighbours confirmed elements of the survivors' stories.
04:48 Common patterns also emerged from the descriptions of the violence given by survivors.
04:52 UN data indicates nearly twice as many adult females as males have crossed the border into
04:58 Chad.
04:59 Despite the targeting of males, the gap is less pronounced among children, where there
05:03 is almost parity between the number of boys and girls.
05:07 The war against the Masalit erupted amid a broader conflict between the Sudanese Armed
05:11 Forces and the RSF, which began in April.
05:15 In early December, the United States determined that both the RSF and the Sudanese army have
05:20 committed war crimes since fighting broke out and spread to Darfur.
05:24 The Biden administration has also accused the RSF and its Arab militia allies of ethnic
05:28 cleansing.
05:29 Both the army and the RSF have blamed each other for any abuses committed in the war.
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