IN THE NEWS: Activists Hail Fidelity's Divestment from Sudan-Linked Oil Company

Haider Rizvi
One World US
May 25, 2007

Last week, Fidelity Investments, the world's leading mutual funds company, announced it had sold 91 percent of its American Depository Receipts in PetroChina, which amounts to nearly half the investment firm's total holdings in the state-owned oil company that operates in Sudan.

Fidelity did not explain why it made the move to sell its PetroChina shares, but observers say it was clear the decision came amid increasing pressure from the Darfur campaign.

"The Fidelity divestment is a good first step," Howard Salter of Washington, DC-based Citizens for Global Solutions, an advocacy group, told OneWorld. "It reflects how individual voices can come together and make a difference."

The group, along with many others, has long been calling for U.S. investors, including Fidelity, to withdraw their money from projects that help the Sudanese government to aid militias involved in genocidal attacks against the indigenous population of Darfur.

The campaign targeting investors in Sudan say there is a well-established link between the oil industry in that country and the government funding of genocide of the people of Darfur.

Fidelity's decision "also sends a strong signal to the Bashir government that the global community is watching," said Salter, referring to Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir, who has been accused of supporting the actions of militia fighters wreaking havoc throughout the villages of Darfur.

China National Petroleum Corporation, PetroChina's parent company and the country's largest energy enterprise, owns the largest single share in the consortium that dominates the Sudanese oil business, in partnership with other foreign firms.

In the past months, time and again the U.S. government has tried hard to win international support for tough sanctions against Khartoum, but failed to build the required consensus in the 15-member United Nations Security Council.

Though dismissive of the Sudanese government's stance on Darfur, both China and Russia, which enjoy veto powers, continue to oppose Western proposals for strict economic sanctions against Sudan.

Neither nation, however, raised opposition to last year's Security Council resolution calling for the deployment of 20,000 UN troops in Darfur, a move that Sudan has never fully accepted.

In rejecting the UN resolution, Sudan argued that it could address the issue of civilian protection in Darfur by using its own military might. The Sudanese government did agree last month to accept a 3,000-strong UN force.

In Darfur, more than 200,000 people -- and by some estimates over 400,000 -- have been killed and at least 2 million others forced from their homes since 2003 when the armed conflict began between rebel groups representing the interests of ethnic African tribes and the Khartoum-backed Janjaweed militia.

With no immediate end to the violence in Darfur in sight, the armed conflict has now spilled over to neighboring countries of Chad and the Central African Republic.

Emboldened by Fidelity's decision, activists in the United States say they will step up the campaign to force other investors to do the same, hoping that the Chinese might also learn a lesson from this move.

Joining the campaign to end genocide in Darfur, some leading U.S. politicians have also divested their money from what activists brand "problematic companies" in Sudan.

While such tactics, according to Salter, could add momentum to the international pressure on Sudan, he believes Washington could do more.

"We implore the Bush administration to use all its diplomatic tools to convince Bashir to allow UN peacekeepers into the region in order to save the lives of the people of Darfur," he said.