Biden admin slammed for waiting to declare genocide in Sudan

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – The Biden Administration has been blasted by the incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen.Jim Risch, R-Idaho., for “waiting” until the outgoing President had only 13 days left in office before declaring rebel actions in Sudan, a country torn apart by 21 months of bitter war, to be “genocide.”Earlier this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that members of the Sudanese rebel group, the Rapid Support Forces or RSF, “have committed genocide in Sudan.” In a statement, Blinken said, “The United States is committed to holding accountable those responsible for these atrocities.

We are sanctioning RSF leader Mohammad Hamdan Daglo Mousa, known as Hemedti, for his role in systematic atrocities committed against the Sudanese people.”Blinken made his rulings, he stated, because “the RSF and RSF-aligned militias have continued to direct attacks against civilians, have systematically murdered men and boys—even infants—on an ethnic basis, and (have) deliberately targeted women and girls from certain ethnic groups for rape and other forms of brutal sexual violence.”The Secretary continued, “Those same militias have targeted fleeing civilians, murdering innocent people escaping conflict, and prevented remaining civilians from accessing lifesaving supplies.”Blinken added that the African nation is suffering through “a conflict of unmitigated brutality that has resulted in the world’s largest humanitarian catastrophe, leaving 638,000 Sudanese experiencing the worst famine in Sudan’s recent history, over 30 million people in need of humanitarian assistance, and tens of thousands dead.”Risch has held out that the situation in Sudan has been catastrophic for well over a year, and called into question the timing of Blinken’s declaration.In a statement earlier this week, he wrote, “It has been nearly a year since I introduced a resolution calling the atrocities in Sudan what the...