Sudan, Brazil, Bangladesh

Today's three stories you should know

Sudan

It’s horror in Sudan, utter horror. As mentioned in Proximities on Monday, the city of el-Fasher in the Darfur region has been captured by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group after 18 months of siege during which the RSF bombarded it daily and blocked the entry of aid, forcing its people into starvation. It was a siege described by many as “medieval.” Thousands of civilians are now being killed in ethnically-motivated reprisals, according to several reports. The Sudanese army, which has been at war with the RSF for two and a half years, says 2,000 people have been killed in the 48 hours since the militia took control of the city. The Sudan Doctors Network says at least 1,500 are dead. And, according to the UN’s World Health Organization, more than 460 people have been slaughtered inside a hospital. Satellite imagery from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University shows what researchers call “clusters of objects and ground discoloration.” What that means in plain English is: piles of dead bodies and blood on the ground. Blood visible from space is not something I have ever heard of before. It should also be noted that the RSF grew out of the notorious Janjaweed militia, which committed what rights groups said was a genocide in Darfur in the 2000s. Yousra Elgabir of Sky News reported that the Sudanese military negotiated safe passage out of the city for its troops as the RSF closed in, effectively abandoning el-Fasher’s civilians to their fate. The United Arab Emirates, which bankrolls and arms the RSF, has remained silent since the bloodletting began. This is a longer Proximities entry than usual for which I apologize. But it’s important. We are watching a potential genocide unfold at pace while the world does nothing. It was obvious that this would happen when el-Fasher fell, and the Sudanese people warned the world for more than 18 months. Today, many Western politicians who had said nothing about Sudan before spoke up and demanded that the killing stop. It’s too late now.

More from Al Jazeera here.

Brazil

At least 132 people have been killed in the deadliest police raid in Brazilian history a week before Rio de Janeiro is due to host the UN COP30 climate summit and related events. Amid speculation that the assault was designed as a warning to gangs ahead of the high-profile events, police denied that the operation had anything to do with COP30 and said they had been planning an assault on a major drugs gang for two months. Locals lined bodies up on the streets, expressing fury that police had summarily executed gang members instead of arresting them. Brazil’s justice minister said President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was “horrified” and “astonished” and did not know about the operation in advance.

More from the Guardian here.

Bangladesh

Bangladesh’s toppled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said millions of people will boycott next year’s national election given her Awami League party is banned. “We still hope common sense will prevail and we will be allowed to contest the election ourselves,” Hasina told Reuters during an interview in India, to where she fled as student protesters stormed her residence last year. The Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have dominated national politics since Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan in 1971, and the BNP is widely expected to win the February elections promised by interim leaders.

More from Reuters here.

NB: Proximities recently published a deep dive on the Bangladesh elections for paid subscribers. Consider going paid for weekly Q&As that put our world in context.