Sudan divestment is a way to pressure genocidal regime- columnist
Genocide Intervention Network
New York Times Columnist Highlights Sudan Divestment Campaign As Way to Pressure Genocidal Regime
Nicholas Kristof Says Targeted Divestment ‘Makes Practical As Well As Moral Sense’
New 1-800-GENOCIDE Hotline Allows Voters to Urge State Governors to Divest
Feb. 12, 2007 (WASHINGTON) — New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof used his column yesterday to highlight the burgeoning campaign to divest mutual funds and pension accounts from companies supporting military expenditures of the genocidal Sudanese regime. Six states and more than 30 universities have restricted their Sudan-related investments, identified on the Sudan Divestment Task Force’s website, www.SudanDivestment.org, a part of the Genocide Intervention Network.
The continuing genocide in Darfur, facilitated by rulers in Khartoum who fund and equip the brutal militias, has claimed the lives of more than 400,000 civilians and driven at least 2.5 million people from their homes. Seventy percent of Sudan’s oil revenues fund weapons used in the genocide.
“The Darfur divestment campaign has been remarkably restrained in choosing targets,” Kristof wrote. “Organizers are not seeking divestment from all of the more than 400 foreign companies that operate in Sudan, but only from a few dozen that are complicit in genocide without helping ordinary Sudanese.”
In his column, Kristof also described a new tool set up by the Genocide Intervention Network for individuals working to divest their state from these genocidal funds: 1-800-GENOCIDE, a toll-free anti-genocide hotline connecting voters directly to their governor’s office. The hotline also enables constituents to learn about the next steps elected officials can take on Darfur and be connected with their members of Congress and the White House.
In 2006, California became the sixth state to divest funds from companies supporting the genocide in Darfur and the first to adopt the Genocide Intervention Network’s targeted policy. In signing the bills that facilitated the divestment, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared, “California will not stand for murder and genocide.” Similar legislation is expected in more than 20 other states this year.
More than 30 colleges and universities, including Harvard, Stanford and Yale Universities, and the Universities of California, Virginia and Maryland, have divested their funds from Sudan. Campaigns have been initiated by students around the country.
Kristof challenged his readers to get involved in local divestment campaigns.
“In Darfur and Chad, aid workers — some of them Americans — are being killed, raped and beaten as they try to alleviate the slaughter,” he wrote. “So shouldn’t we make the minimal sacrifice of divestment, rather than blithely continue to invest in ways that provide grenades and guns to kill aid workers and Darfuris alike?”
The executive director of the Genocide Intervention Network, Mark Hanis, thanked Kristof for continuing to raise the alarm about the genocide in Darfur.
“Nicholas Kristof’s tireless efforts have proven that covering a genocide is newsworthy and can be told beyond simply listing the death toll,” Hanis says.
Kristof’s column is available online at the New York Times’ website for TimesSelect subscribers, as well as in print in the Times’ Sunday, Feb. 11 edition.
Contact:
Genocide Intervention Network
Ivan Boothe,
Director of Communications
e-mail: [email protected]
phone: 202.481.8220