US Kansas senator wants state to divest from Sudan
Mar 3, 2006 (WICHITA) — Sen. Donald Betts has a resolution you should support. Betts proposes the state divest nearly $400 million he says is invested in companies doing business in Sudan. Money that could be financing oppression.
“As a superpower, we can encourage other nations to act,” Betts said of the African nation where President Bush, Sen. Sam Brownback and others say genocide is taking place. “I would hope that the Kansas Legislature and the U.S. government step up to the plate.”
The resolution urging divestiture of investments in Darfur, a region of Sudan, reads in part, “Whereas the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) currently has invested in 39 Sudanese companies; and those KPERS investments total $365,305,079.14, while the Kansas City Police Employees’ Retirement (KCPER) currently has invested $29,979,944.90 in nine Sudanese companies;… Be it further resolved: That the Treasurer of the State of Kansas consider a policy of divestiture from such investments.”
The KPERS Web site lists its membership at nearly 250,000 — that’s nearly one in every 12 Kansans — and says it manages roughly $11 billion in assets.
KPERS executive director Glenn Deck said he doesn’t doubt that KPERS has investments in multinational corporations with small holdings in Sudan, but he questions the resolution’s numbers.
“Those figures didn’t come from us,” Deck said. “We don’t have any direct holdings there. I know for a fact that we don’t have investments in 39 Sudanese companies.”
Deck also said the connection between investment money and political oppression isn’t always as clear as divestiture efforts can suggest. Sometimes, he said, these companies offer a great deal of humanitarian aid.
“It’s a complicated issue requiring careful analysis.”
But activists were able to use divestiture to help end South African apartheid in the 1980s. Universities such as Stanford and George Washington, as well as states such as Connecticut and Massachusetts, have introduced Darfur divestiture proposals.
Betts introduced his resolution Feb. 21. It has been sent to a committee for study because it would call for a change in the way public money is invested.
Betts said he offered the resolution after reading a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago about lawyer Barbara James’ effort to educate Wichitans about Darfur.
“It would be nice to get some heat behind it,” he said.
The situation there is past desperate. The Sudanese government, using Arab militias, has systematically killed more than 300,000 black Sudanese. A million more driven from their homes face starvation as the government and militias block humanitarian aid. The same forces have destroyed villages and crops, poisoned water supplies, and continue to rape and terrorize.
For years now, people concerned about the killing in Darfur have puzzled over how to make it relevant to people so far removed from Africa. Now it seems we’re, at minimum, passive participants with the responsibility to act.
(Wichita Eagle)
It’s time to put your money where your conscience is, Kansas, and get it out of Darfur.