Sudan Campaign Heats Up

By Zenitha PrinceSpecial to the NNPA from Afro Newspapers BALTIMORE (NNPA) — Black activists and lawmakers ramped up their campaign against the wholesale murder and displacement of millions of Black Sudanese last week, introducing a measure requiring divestment of U.S. pension funds invested in companies with holdings in oil-rich Sudan. New Jersey State Assemblyman William Payne (D-29), brother of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne (D-N.J.), has introduced legislation to require the state to divest itself of its portion of the $91 billion in U.S. investments in companies, banks and financial institutions that have dealings with the Khartoum administration. The bill is the first of many, which the Sudan Campaign and the Congressional Black Caucus hope will flood state assemblies throughout the nation as part of their push to check the Sudanese government, under whose auspice Arab militias burned, pillaged, raped, tortured and decimated villages of the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes, which are Black. ”The government of Sudan, who orchestrated and has carried out the genocide with the help of their militia recruits, the Janjaweed, is a pariah government [which] has shown over the years that it is willing to and able to wipe out an entire people through the brutal campaign of bombardment and violent displacement in Southern Sudan, so it is no surprise that it would do the same thing in Darfur,” said Rep. Payne. Figures compiled by the Center for Security Policy, which fuel the campaign, show that although no American companies are involved, American dollars are being invested in 83 publicly traded companies, such as PetroChina, French communications conglomerate Alcatel and German equipment maker Siemens. ”It’s our money that these companies are using in Sudan, investments that effectively make them complicit in the murder of more than 35,000 Black Muslim Sudanese this year alone, and the killing continues,” said former U.S. Rep. William Fauntroy, who leads the Sudan Campaign along with radio talk show host Joe Madison. The present situation in Darfur, Sudan, erupted in early 2003 when the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement staged an uprising to force the Sudan government to equitably distribute the country’s oil wealth. Exploiting ancient rivalries between the Black farmers, from whom the rebels came, and Arab herdsmen, the Sudan government employed Arab militia to systematically wipe out Black Darfurians. In the intervening months, the government made several promises to rein in the rampaging militias and as late as this month, it seemingly caved in to pressure from the United Nations by signing a treaty with the rebels promising to disband and disarm them and relocate the nearly two million displaced persons. But Khartoum has continually broken such agreements. USAID reported that on Nov. 10, government police fired tear gas, assaulted IDPs and leveled temporary IDP shelters in Algiers, continue to forcefully relocate IDPs and block international aid. ”The only pressure this government feels is economic pressure,” said Payne. And the task of applying that pressure falls on citizens, Fauntroy said. ”As with South African apartheid 20 years ago, now is the time for real shareholder activism by the people. When we divested the stock of the companies aiding and abetting the odious, racist policy of apartheid, it made the difference. We did it before. The time has come for us to do it again.”