UMass divesting funds from Sudan

UMass divesting funds from Sudan

	Published : Mon, 30 Apr 2007 23:49 By : Agencies Print this Story

BOSTON (AP) - The University of Massachusetts is to withdraw more than $530,000 of its funds invested in Sudan, to pressure the government of Africa's largest country to end the war in its western region of Darfur.

The four-year war has killed more than 200,000 people, displaced more than 2.5 million and sparked a regional humanitarian crisis after spilling over into neighboring Chad and Central African Republic.

The university's Investment Committee has directed managers to divest the money from companies listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force, a group coordinating the Sudan divestment movement, according to a statement released Monday.

The committee also directed the managers of its various actively managed funds to make no new investments in companies on that list.

UMass joins dozens of other universities, states, funds and companies that have pulled their money out of Sudan. Its decision came one day after activists from across New England protested on Boston Common, pressing Fidelity Investment to withdraw its money from a Chinese oil company doing business in Sudan.

Among the speakers at that protest were Darfur scholars and Massachusetts lawmakers pushing a bill that would require the state to divest from companies doing business in Sudan.

'We are taking this action because we believe that it is the right thing to do,' Investment Committee Chairman Roy Zuckerberg said Monday.

'I am delighted by the committee's decision,' UMass President Jack Wilson said. 'This decision is consistent with the university's traditions and values.'

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003, when ethnic African tribesmen took up arms, complaining of decades of neglect and discrimination by the Khartoum government. The government is accused of arming militiamen as a counterinsurgency tactic, which it denies, and the militiamen are blamed for widespread rapes and killings against Darfur civilians.

Last month, the State Department issued a report calling the campaign by the Sudanese military and its proxy militias against Darfur rebel groups a genocide -- a term the United Nations has refrained from applying to Darfur.