DUBAI: The United Arab Emirates on Friday denied an Amnesty International report accusing it of providing Chinese-made weapons to Sudanese paramilitary forces at war with the regular army.
“The UAE strongly rejects the suggestion that it is supplying weaponry to any party involved in the ongoing conflict in Sudan,“ said Salem Aljaberi, the UAE’s assistant minister for security and military affairs.
“These claims are baseless and lack substantiated evidence,“ he said in a statement posted on the foreign ministry’s X account.
On Thursday, Amnesty said it identified “Chinese GB50A guided bombs and 155mm AH-4 howitzers” through analysis of footage of attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) on Khartoum and Darfur.
The London-based human rights group said the UAE was the only country to import howitzers from China, in a deal in 2019.
It relied on data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute for its report.
“The howitzer referenced in the report is a system manufactured outside the UAE and has been available on the international market for nearly a decade,“ Aljaberi said, labelling the Amnesty report as “misleading”.
“The assertion that only one country has procured or transferred this system is invalid,“ he added.
Amnesty’s report came as the RSF pressed its long-range drone attacks on army-held cities in Sudan.
Abu Dhabi has repeatedly denied arming the RSF, despite reports from UN experts, US politicians and international organisations.
On Tuesday, the army-aligned government severed ties with the UAE, accusing it of supplying the RSF with the advanced weapons systems it has used to strike Port Sudan.
The UAE denied the allegation, saying the internationally recognised administration “does not represent the legitimate government of Sudan“.
