Gavin Mortimer
The Sudanese man who is in custody in Belfast settled in the city after travelling through Paris and Dublin. In 2023, he was given asylum by the British Home Office.
That same year, Sudan descended into civil war, a conflict that continues to rage with appalling accounts of barbarity. On the one side are the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and on the other the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Caught in the middle are civilians, particularly women and children, who are being abused by both sides.
Earlier this year, the UN’s Human Rights Council accused combatants of displaying ‘utter disregard for human life’. Schools, hospitals and markets have been targeted indiscriminately, and ‘bodies of Sudanese women and girls have been weaponised to terrorise communities’. The UN explained that gang rape, sexual torture and slavery are commonplace.
The ongoing civil war is the latest outbreak of violence in a country that has rarely known peace in the last three quarters of a century. The first civil war in Sudan began in 1955 and lasted until 1972; the second erupted in 1983 and continued until 2005. Who knows how long this third civil war will last.
