The torture and killing of Qisma Ali Omar in South Darfur, Sudan sparks global outrage

Yesterday, a video began circulating showing Qisma Ali Omar, a young Sudanese woman from Nyala, South Darfur, her arms tied and her body hanging from a tree as she was tortured in broad daylight.

Yesterday, a video began circulating showing Qisma Ali Omar, a young Sudanese woman from Nyala, South Darfur, her arms tied and her body hanging from a tree as she was tortured in broad daylight. The man standing over her, identified by her community as a member of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), reportedly killed her after accusing her of collaborating with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).

Her suffering is unbearable to watch. This is horror Sudanese women know all too well—deliberate, relentless violence that strips away not only life but also the very essence of humanity. Communities are left shattered, carrying the heavy knowledge that no one will intervene. This brutality is so repetitive and systematic that it no longer shocks, it numbs, it consumes, and it reminds every woman that in Sudan, suffering is inherited, survival is temporary, and the cruelty of war is both personal and endless.

This year in South Darfur, doctors treated hundreds of women and girls after brutal sexual assaults, some as young as five. In Al Jazirah, women chose death by poison or drowning in the Nile over the certainty of rape. Survivors remain unrecognizable, carrying wounds that never heal. For generations, women in Darfur, the Nuba Mountains, and South Sudan have borne the worst of war—babies torn from mothers, girls forced into pregnancies before childhood began, women mutilated, executed, beaten, and raped before their families, and even grandmothers forced to endure this violence anew.

The RSF denies this video, just as they deny every atrocity they commit. But they are not alone. The SAF, unconstitutional leaders clinging to power, other armed groups, and international actors—some funding these crimes, others ignoring them—are all complicit in the bloodshed of Sudanese women.

The torture and murder of Qisma is a devastating reminder that darkness still hunts Sudanese women. It will never leave them because militias, armed groups, and leaders enforce it, because perpetrators and enablers face no consequences. It lives in their bones, in their breath, in the silence forced upon them. It lingers in the empty eyes of children who have seen everything, in the hollow grief of families who have lost everything. There is no end. There is no justice. There is only the endless shadow of what has been done—and what will be done again—visible to the world yet untouched by it. And still, in the quiet spaces between ruins, women hold one another, carry one another, and bear witness together, because in this relentless darkness, there is nothing else.