Foreign Ministry calls on the international community to condemn the terrorist behavior of the militia

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the true and dangerous dimensions of the criminal plot being carried out by the terrorist Janjaweed militia and its regional sponsor against the Sudanese nation are becoming clearer every day.
The plot is being carried out by the terrorist Janjaweed militia and its regional sponsor against the Sudanese nation: its people, its state, its cultural heritage, its historical memory, and its economic and scientific infrastructure.
Just as the liberation of Khartoum State, following a dazzling heroic epic by the armed forces and their supporting forces, revealed the unprecedented extent to which the militia had descended in its atrocities against the Sudanese people, represented by the mass graves of thousands of dead hostages and prisoners in secret torture centers spread throughout the capital, with those who survived being reduced to skeletons, the militia and its sponsors’ targeting of Sudan’s historical and cultural heritage has also become apparent. This included the deliberate destruction of the Sudanese National Museum and the looting of its collections, which represent a civilization spanning 7,000 years. This included targeting all museums in the capital, including the Khalifa House Museum, the Ethnography Museum, the Republican Palace Museum, the Armed Forces Museum, and the Natural History Museum at the University of Khartoum, in addition to the Sultan Ali Dinar Museum in El Fasher.

The archaeological archives in the National Museum were looted and smuggled through two neighboring countries. At the same time, the militia targeted the National Archives, a large number of public and private libraries, universities, laboratories, mosques, and churches of historical value in the capital and Wad Medani, demonstrating that the plot was aimed at erasing the national cultural identity.

These attacks constitute war crimes under Article 8 of the Rome Statute, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, and the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Prohibition of Trafficking in Cultural Property.
The behavior of terrorist groups in targeting antiquities and the cultural heritage of communities is similar.

The Government of Sudan will continue its efforts with UNESCO, Interpol, and all organizations concerned with the protection of museums, antiquities, and cultural property to recover the looted contents of the National Museum and other museums and hold those responsible for these crimes accountable.
It calls on the international community to condemn this terrorist behavior by the militia and those behind it.