Genocide in Sudan
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John Ashworth
Jun 11, 2026, 7:17:31 AMJun 11
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1. The NBA’s Genocide Problem
By Eric A. Friedman and John Prendergast
Just Security, June 8, 2026
This year’s NBA playoffs have been a remarkable success, with historic
comebacks and overtime thrillers, helping to draw the most viewers in
decades. Tragically, this success on the court comes during a dark
moment for the league off the court. The National Basketball
Association is undermining its historic commitment to racial and
social justice, to its players, and to people a continent away, the
people of Sudan.
The link between the NBA and the Sudanese people runs through the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), a key partner of the NBA and the most
influential external actor in Sudan’s war, a conflict that has
generated the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Through its
commercial branding deal, the NBA essentially has been coopted onto
the UAE’s side in that conflict: The UAE’s state-owned airline,
Emirates, is flying high during the playoffs, its branding displayed
on top of the backboard, digitally overlaid on the court or
surrounding areas, and sewn onto the jerseys of all referees — part of
the league’s commercial partnership with the UAE that generates
hundreds of millions of dollars per year for the NBA and the airline.
This year’s NBA Championship gives the UAE a bonus boost, as it
features the New York Knicks, whose jerseys sport patches reading
“Experience Abu Dhabi” (referring to the largest of the UAE emirates).
The Knicks rake in $30 million annually from this deal.
These displays feed into the UAE’s economic and diplomatic strategy
aimed at creating a national brand of “a visionary, futuristic and
forward-looking state.” Its reputation is a source of both significant
soft power and economic strength.
Yet the UAE is forward-looking only if dystopia awaits. For it is the
chief arms supplier of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the
paramilitary group battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for
control of Sudan and its resources. (The UAE denies that it has armed
the RSF, despite reams of evidence, including from human rights
organizations, U.S. lawmakers, the U.S. intelligence community, the
Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, and reporting by the New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal, and Middle East Eye. It cynically touts its
humanitarian aid to Sudan, even as it seeks to disguise military
assistance to the UAE as humanitarian aid.) The UAE is also a hub for
RSF-owned businesses and a safe haven for RSF leaders’ wealth through
their real estate investments, as documented in an investigation by
the policy organization The Sentry (co-founded by one of us, John).
Both the RSF and the SAF are responsible for mass atrocities, and
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been key supporters of the SAF. The RSF,
though, is also responsible for the most intense period of ethnically
motivated murder since the Rwandan genocide more than 30 years ago,
killing an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people in and around El Fasher
last year in a matter of weeks, as families were massacred and women
raped. “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur,” RSF fighters
declared, according to witnesses interviewed by a U.N. independent
fact-finding mission. “If we find Zaghawa [a non-Arab ethnic group in
Darfur], we will kill them all.” Far from the RSF’s only series of
atrocities, which the United States determined in January 2025
amounted to genocide, this was part of a pattern that began only weeks
into the war, which erupted on April 15, 2023, with RSF attacks
targeting ethnic Massalit residents of El Geneina, in Darfur, killing
10,000-15,000 people by the end of 2023, according to U.N. expert
panel estimates.
Laundering a Reputation Amid Racial and Ethnic Killing
The NBA is thus profiting handsomely and laundering the reputation of
a regime that is underwriting a militia responsible for killing people
based on their race and ethnicity. And even worse, it is part of an
ecosystem of elite global brands that persist with their
UAE-reputation-boosting brand partnerships more than three years into
the UAE-backed genocide in Sudan. Other brands include the Premier
League (UK football/soccer), Formula One (car racing), UCI (bicycle
racing), the Ultimate Fighting Championship (mixed martial arts,
coming soon to a White House lawn near you, unless a new lawsuit stops
it), ATP Tour and Grand Slam tournaments (tennis), DP World Tour
(golf), Disney, Warner Brothers, and the Guggenheim. They are
promoting the image of the UAE that its regime wants the world to see,
deflecting the reputational — and real economic and strategic costs
this would impose — that the UAE might otherwise experience.
The NBA cannot say it did not know. For nearly two years, at least,
human rights organizations have been raising these concerns with NBA
leadership. The response is always a variation on a theme: We are
following U.S. State Department guidance. (The State Department under
both the Biden and current Trump administrations have determined that
the RSF is committing genocide but has not publicly identified the UAE
for its role in arming the RSF, nor advised against doing business
with the UAE.) In effect, the NBA has chosen to delegate its ethical
judgments to the U.S. government.
Yet this is not a league known for blindly following government
policy. Silence was not an option for the NBA after George Floyd was
murdered. After federal immigration agents killed Renée Good and Alex
Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year, the NBA Players Association
left no doubt where it stood: with the protesters opposed to an
inhumane policy. And the NBA Social Justice Coalition — encompassing
NBA executives, players, and coaches — has advocated for changes in
law at both national and state levels. Nationally, it has supported
the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote Act,
the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and the EQUAL Act (to end
the disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine). At the
state level, it has advocated for legislation to help reintegrate
people with criminal records into their communities and to restore
voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals. And in 2017, the
NBA moved its All-Star game out of Charlotte after North Carolina
passed legislation that removed protections against discrimination for
LGBTQ+ individuals.
Time and again, the NBA, with players in the lead, has chosen to speak
out and to act against injustices. Silence and inaction should not be
an option now, not when the NBA is encouraging its fans to use their
hard-earned dollars to fly Emirates and experience Abu Dhabi — and in
so doing, to fund a regime that is sending weapons it buys to a
genocidal militia.
Yet now, though genocide is underway and the NBA is bound up with its
supporters, the League has abdicated any moral responsibility
regarding the atrocities unfolding in Sudan. It needs to change
course. Human rights is not a U.S. government priority in the Middle
East, where oil has long been the central consideration. Moreover,
U.S. policy on the UAE is now wrapped up in President Donald Trump’s
family’s business dealings, most notably a UAE-backed firm’s 49
percent stake in their cryptocurrency company, World Liberty
Financial, along with a $2 billion investment in the company’s
stablecoin. U.S. State Department guidance in this case will not be
driven by human rights concerns.
The NBA’s Own Moral Compass
As an ethical organization, the NBA needs to follow its own moral
compass, guided by principles rooted in social justice and its own
history of championing human rights and racial justice.
The NBA and the Knicks should immediately suspend their partnerships
with the UAE, expressly link those decisions to the UAE’s military
support for the RSF, and keep the door open to resuming the
partnership if the UAE immediately and verifiably ends this support.
On Oct. 27, 2025, at El-Fasher University, one RSF commander
encountered a pregnant woman. How far into her pregnancy was she, he
asked, according to two survivors. “Seven months,” she responded. He
proceeded to kill her — with seven shots into her abdomen, as if it
were one for every month toward a life that would never be. The U.S.
government may be content to maintain business as usual with the
regime in Abu Dhabi that has done so much to make such inhumanity
possible. As it has for decades on other issues of racial and social
justice, the NBA can listen to its better angels and make a different
choice.
https://www.justsecurity.org/141439/nba-genocide-problem-uae-sudan/
END1
2. Victims sue the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Kenya for War Crimes
Ayn Network - June 10, 2026
لضحايا يقاضون الدعم السريع في كينيا بتهم جرائم الحرب
(Google English translation - I tried to copy and paste the orginal
Arabic text but I don't have Arabic software on my computer and the
wrods got jumb;ed up somewhat when I pasted them)
The Global Legal Initiative and the African Centre for Justice and
Peace Studies, represented by a law firm in the Kenyan capital
Nairobi, filed a criminal complaint on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, with the
Director of Public Prosecutions in Nairobi on behalf of 12 Sudanese
victims against the Rapid Support Forces, which have been waging war
against the army since April 2023.
According to a joint statement by the Global Legal Initiative and the
African Centre, the victims are asking the Director of Public
Prosecutions to investigate ten members of the Rapid Support Forces,
including some individuals allegedly linked to Kenya, for committing
these international crimes in and around Khartoum between April 2023
and March 2025.
This is the first time in Kenya’s history that a complaint of war
crimes and crimes against humanity has been filed under the principle
of universal jurisdiction, which allows Kenyan authorities to
prosecute crimes committed in another country.
The African Centre’s Executive Director, Mosaad Mohamed Ali, said:
“The victims and survivors have waited a long time for justice at both
the national and international levels. This action today gives hope to
many Sudanese to work to combat impunity for these crimes and
atrocities.”
For her part, Antonia Mulvey, Executive Director of the Global Legal
Initiative, said: “The United Nations recently concluded that the
Rapid Support Forces committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity. The Rapid Support Forces devastated the lives of millions of
people across Sudan, killing tens of thousands, starving them and
sexually enslaving them, including children.”
She continued: “The Kenyan public is aware that some perpetrators move
freely to and from Kenya. Many are outraged that this is allowed to
happen. Kenya should not be a haven for war criminals.”
Kenyan lawyer Owisu Owisu, representing the complainants, said: “It is
not just an opportunity to test Kenya’s commitment to international
justice, but also proof that even though domestic accountability
systems and the international community have failed to protect the
Sudanese people, avenues for accountability remain open.”
The statement indicated that the twelve survivors were subjected to
unlawful detention, torture, and rape, and witnessed the killing of
family members. The crimes occurred in and around Khartoum, including
at Soba Prison, the Riyadh compound, and unofficial detention sites.
Men and women gave harrowing accounts of the Rapid Support Forces
using sexual violence to punish and humiliate those suspected of
belonging to the Sudanese Armed Forces. Several women were subjected
to sexual slavery.
The statement quoted one of the complainants, aged 34, as saying: “By
filing this lawsuit, I was able to make my voice heard and draw the
attention of the region and the international community to the
horrific human rights violations committed against civilians in Sudan.
I hope this will contribute to putting an end to impunity.”
The statement noted that in Sudan, the judicial system alone cannot
achieve accountability in the current conflict. The jurisdiction of
the International Criminal Court is limited to Darfur. Other
international and regional mechanisms have no mandate for criminal
accountability.
He noted that the UN fact-finding mission concluded that
accountability remains elusive for crimes committed by the Rapid
Support Forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces, and affiliated entities.
Regardless of the perpetrators, victims have the right to legal
representation and accountability for the crimes they suffered and
witnessed.
https://3ayin.com/war-crimes-3-/
END2
3. Attached please find a report from the International Peace Bureau
entitled "Situational Brief: The Sudanese Civil War", June 2026.
This situational brief examines the ongoing civil war in Sudan,
tracing the origins of the conflict, the regional and international
actors sustaining it, and its devastating impact on civilians. It
highlights the widespread atrocities committed during the war, the
catastrophic humanitarian crisis facing the Sudanese population, and
the vital role played by Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) in
sustaining communities amid state collapse. The brief also outlines
the failures of the international response and presents the
International Peace Bureau’s position and calls to action for
governments, institutions, and civil society.
https://ipb.org/ipb-situational-brief-the-sudanese-civil-war/
END3
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
By Eric A. Friedman and John Prendergast
Just Security, June 8, 2026
This year’s NBA playoffs have been a remarkable success, with historic
comebacks and overtime thrillers, helping to draw the most viewers in
decades. Tragically, this success on the court comes during a dark
moment for the league off the court. The National Basketball
Association is undermining its historic commitment to racial and
social justice, to its players, and to people a continent away, the
people of Sudan.
The link between the NBA and the Sudanese people runs through the
United Arab Emirates (UAE), a key partner of the NBA and the most
influential external actor in Sudan’s war, a conflict that has
generated the largest humanitarian crisis in the world. Through its
commercial branding deal, the NBA essentially has been coopted onto
the UAE’s side in that conflict: The UAE’s state-owned airline,
Emirates, is flying high during the playoffs, its branding displayed
on top of the backboard, digitally overlaid on the court or
surrounding areas, and sewn onto the jerseys of all referees — part of
the league’s commercial partnership with the UAE that generates
hundreds of millions of dollars per year for the NBA and the airline.
This year’s NBA Championship gives the UAE a bonus boost, as it
features the New York Knicks, whose jerseys sport patches reading
“Experience Abu Dhabi” (referring to the largest of the UAE emirates).
The Knicks rake in $30 million annually from this deal.
These displays feed into the UAE’s economic and diplomatic strategy
aimed at creating a national brand of “a visionary, futuristic and
forward-looking state.” Its reputation is a source of both significant
soft power and economic strength.
Yet the UAE is forward-looking only if dystopia awaits. For it is the
chief arms supplier of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the
paramilitary group battling the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) for
control of Sudan and its resources. (The UAE denies that it has armed
the RSF, despite reams of evidence, including from human rights
organizations, U.S. lawmakers, the U.S. intelligence community, the
Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, and reporting by the New York Times,
the Wall Street Journal, and Middle East Eye. It cynically touts its
humanitarian aid to Sudan, even as it seeks to disguise military
assistance to the UAE as humanitarian aid.) The UAE is also a hub for
RSF-owned businesses and a safe haven for RSF leaders’ wealth through
their real estate investments, as documented in an investigation by
the policy organization The Sentry (co-founded by one of us, John).
Both the RSF and the SAF are responsible for mass atrocities, and
Egypt and Saudi Arabia have been key supporters of the SAF. The RSF,
though, is also responsible for the most intense period of ethnically
motivated murder since the Rwandan genocide more than 30 years ago,
killing an estimated 30,000 to 100,000 people in and around El Fasher
last year in a matter of weeks, as families were massacred and women
raped. “We want to eliminate anything black from Darfur,” RSF fighters
declared, according to witnesses interviewed by a U.N. independent
fact-finding mission. “If we find Zaghawa [a non-Arab ethnic group in
Darfur], we will kill them all.” Far from the RSF’s only series of
atrocities, which the United States determined in January 2025
amounted to genocide, this was part of a pattern that began only weeks
into the war, which erupted on April 15, 2023, with RSF attacks
targeting ethnic Massalit residents of El Geneina, in Darfur, killing
10,000-15,000 people by the end of 2023, according to U.N. expert
panel estimates.
Laundering a Reputation Amid Racial and Ethnic Killing
The NBA is thus profiting handsomely and laundering the reputation of
a regime that is underwriting a militia responsible for killing people
based on their race and ethnicity. And even worse, it is part of an
ecosystem of elite global brands that persist with their
UAE-reputation-boosting brand partnerships more than three years into
the UAE-backed genocide in Sudan. Other brands include the Premier
League (UK football/soccer), Formula One (car racing), UCI (bicycle
racing), the Ultimate Fighting Championship (mixed martial arts,
coming soon to a White House lawn near you, unless a new lawsuit stops
it), ATP Tour and Grand Slam tournaments (tennis), DP World Tour
(golf), Disney, Warner Brothers, and the Guggenheim. They are
promoting the image of the UAE that its regime wants the world to see,
deflecting the reputational — and real economic and strategic costs
this would impose — that the UAE might otherwise experience.
The NBA cannot say it did not know. For nearly two years, at least,
human rights organizations have been raising these concerns with NBA
leadership. The response is always a variation on a theme: We are
following U.S. State Department guidance. (The State Department under
both the Biden and current Trump administrations have determined that
the RSF is committing genocide but has not publicly identified the UAE
for its role in arming the RSF, nor advised against doing business
with the UAE.) In effect, the NBA has chosen to delegate its ethical
judgments to the U.S. government.
Yet this is not a league known for blindly following government
policy. Silence was not an option for the NBA after George Floyd was
murdered. After federal immigration agents killed Renée Good and Alex
Pretti in Minnesota earlier this year, the NBA Players Association
left no doubt where it stood: with the protesters opposed to an
inhumane policy. And the NBA Social Justice Coalition — encompassing
NBA executives, players, and coaches — has advocated for changes in
law at both national and state levels. Nationally, it has supported
the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, the Freedom to Vote Act,
the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, and the EQUAL Act (to end
the disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine). At the
state level, it has advocated for legislation to help reintegrate
people with criminal records into their communities and to restore
voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals. And in 2017, the
NBA moved its All-Star game out of Charlotte after North Carolina
passed legislation that removed protections against discrimination for
LGBTQ+ individuals.
Time and again, the NBA, with players in the lead, has chosen to speak
out and to act against injustices. Silence and inaction should not be
an option now, not when the NBA is encouraging its fans to use their
hard-earned dollars to fly Emirates and experience Abu Dhabi — and in
so doing, to fund a regime that is sending weapons it buys to a
genocidal militia.
Yet now, though genocide is underway and the NBA is bound up with its
supporters, the League has abdicated any moral responsibility
regarding the atrocities unfolding in Sudan. It needs to change
course. Human rights is not a U.S. government priority in the Middle
East, where oil has long been the central consideration. Moreover,
U.S. policy on the UAE is now wrapped up in President Donald Trump’s
family’s business dealings, most notably a UAE-backed firm’s 49
percent stake in their cryptocurrency company, World Liberty
Financial, along with a $2 billion investment in the company’s
stablecoin. U.S. State Department guidance in this case will not be
driven by human rights concerns.
The NBA’s Own Moral Compass
As an ethical organization, the NBA needs to follow its own moral
compass, guided by principles rooted in social justice and its own
history of championing human rights and racial justice.
The NBA and the Knicks should immediately suspend their partnerships
with the UAE, expressly link those decisions to the UAE’s military
support for the RSF, and keep the door open to resuming the
partnership if the UAE immediately and verifiably ends this support.
On Oct. 27, 2025, at El-Fasher University, one RSF commander
encountered a pregnant woman. How far into her pregnancy was she, he
asked, according to two survivors. “Seven months,” she responded. He
proceeded to kill her — with seven shots into her abdomen, as if it
were one for every month toward a life that would never be. The U.S.
government may be content to maintain business as usual with the
regime in Abu Dhabi that has done so much to make such inhumanity
possible. As it has for decades on other issues of racial and social
justice, the NBA can listen to its better angels and make a different
choice.
https://www.justsecurity.org/141439/nba-genocide-problem-uae-sudan/
END1
2. Victims sue the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Kenya for War Crimes
Ayn Network - June 10, 2026
لضحايا يقاضون الدعم السريع في كينيا بتهم جرائم الحرب
(Google English translation - I tried to copy and paste the orginal
Arabic text but I don't have Arabic software on my computer and the
wrods got jumb;ed up somewhat when I pasted them)
The Global Legal Initiative and the African Centre for Justice and
Peace Studies, represented by a law firm in the Kenyan capital
Nairobi, filed a criminal complaint on Tuesday, June 9, 2026, with the
Director of Public Prosecutions in Nairobi on behalf of 12 Sudanese
victims against the Rapid Support Forces, which have been waging war
against the army since April 2023.
According to a joint statement by the Global Legal Initiative and the
African Centre, the victims are asking the Director of Public
Prosecutions to investigate ten members of the Rapid Support Forces,
including some individuals allegedly linked to Kenya, for committing
these international crimes in and around Khartoum between April 2023
and March 2025.
This is the first time in Kenya’s history that a complaint of war
crimes and crimes against humanity has been filed under the principle
of universal jurisdiction, which allows Kenyan authorities to
prosecute crimes committed in another country.
The African Centre’s Executive Director, Mosaad Mohamed Ali, said:
“The victims and survivors have waited a long time for justice at both
the national and international levels. This action today gives hope to
many Sudanese to work to combat impunity for these crimes and
atrocities.”
For her part, Antonia Mulvey, Executive Director of the Global Legal
Initiative, said: “The United Nations recently concluded that the
Rapid Support Forces committed genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity. The Rapid Support Forces devastated the lives of millions of
people across Sudan, killing tens of thousands, starving them and
sexually enslaving them, including children.”
She continued: “The Kenyan public is aware that some perpetrators move
freely to and from Kenya. Many are outraged that this is allowed to
happen. Kenya should not be a haven for war criminals.”
Kenyan lawyer Owisu Owisu, representing the complainants, said: “It is
not just an opportunity to test Kenya’s commitment to international
justice, but also proof that even though domestic accountability
systems and the international community have failed to protect the
Sudanese people, avenues for accountability remain open.”
The statement indicated that the twelve survivors were subjected to
unlawful detention, torture, and rape, and witnessed the killing of
family members. The crimes occurred in and around Khartoum, including
at Soba Prison, the Riyadh compound, and unofficial detention sites.
Men and women gave harrowing accounts of the Rapid Support Forces
using sexual violence to punish and humiliate those suspected of
belonging to the Sudanese Armed Forces. Several women were subjected
to sexual slavery.
The statement quoted one of the complainants, aged 34, as saying: “By
filing this lawsuit, I was able to make my voice heard and draw the
attention of the region and the international community to the
horrific human rights violations committed against civilians in Sudan.
I hope this will contribute to putting an end to impunity.”
The statement noted that in Sudan, the judicial system alone cannot
achieve accountability in the current conflict. The jurisdiction of
the International Criminal Court is limited to Darfur. Other
international and regional mechanisms have no mandate for criminal
accountability.
He noted that the UN fact-finding mission concluded that
accountability remains elusive for crimes committed by the Rapid
Support Forces, the Sudanese Armed Forces, and affiliated entities.
Regardless of the perpetrators, victims have the right to legal
representation and accountability for the crimes they suffered and
witnessed.
https://3ayin.com/war-crimes-3-/
END2
3. Attached please find a report from the International Peace Bureau
entitled "Situational Brief: The Sudanese Civil War", June 2026.
This situational brief examines the ongoing civil war in Sudan,
tracing the origins of the conflict, the regional and international
actors sustaining it, and its devastating impact on civilians. It
highlights the widespread atrocities committed during the war, the
catastrophic humanitarian crisis facing the Sudanese population, and
the vital role played by Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) in
sustaining communities amid state collapse. The brief also outlines
the failures of the international response and presents the
International Peace Bureau’s position and calls to action for
governments, institutions, and civil society.
https://ipb.org/ipb-situational-brief-the-sudanese-civil-war/
END3
______________________
John Ashworth
ashwor...@gmail.com
+254 725 926 297 (Kenya mobile, WhatsApp and Signal)
PO Box 403 - 00206, Kiserian, Kenya
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