Divestiture for Sudan is urged

AUSTIN, USA, Feb 17, 2005 (San Antonio Express-News) — A state officeholder wants Texas and municipal pension funds to divest from companies doing business in Sudan because of the continuing violence there

Michael Williams, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, has written pension fund managers saying he wants the funds to gradually divest from Russian and Chinese companies that operate in Sudan. U.S. firms already are barred from the African nation.

According to a Web site that urges divestiture, www.divestsudan.org, several state and local pension funds have $8 billion in investments in such companies.

The Sudanese government has reached a peace deal with rebel forces that could quell a more-than-20-year civil war. But civilians in Sudan’s western Darfur region separately have faced a fearsome campaign by a government-backed militia leading to at least 100,000 deaths.

“As a private citizen with a public responsibility, I don’t want us to wake up 10 years from now, like we are with Rwanda, and say, ‘Why aren’t we doing something?'” Williams said.

In 1994, Rwanda experienced a three-month genocide that officially left 937,000 people dead at the hands of organized militias that the international community failed to stop.

Williams, saying calls for divestiture helped end apartheid in South Africa, said, “I’m looking for some way for us as private citizens to be helpful.”

Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth, has filed legislation to require divestiture, and the Associated Press reports legislators in California, New Jersey and several other states have weighed such action.

Williams said he would prefer Texas pension funds shed their investments without being ordered to by the Legislature.

Williams on Thursday visited in Washington with John Garang, leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, who expects to be sworn in as first vice president of the nation in the wake of the peace agreement between the government and forces led by Garang.