Get Massachusetts money out of Sudan
I MET Halima in a displaced persons camp called Zam Zam. She described the day her village was attacked, first by Sudanese government bombers, then by the merciless, government-backed janjaweed militia. She said, "The janjaweed tore my baby son from my arms and bayoneted him in front of my eyes." She clasped my hands and said, "Tell people what is happening here. Tell them we will all be slaughtered. Tell them we need help."
Another young mother, Fatima, fled her burning village with her baby tied to her back. When the janjaweed shot her, the bullet passed through the child, killing him. I watched a small boy, shot in the lungs, struggling to breathe, and I have seen others whose eyes had been gouged out with knives.
To my horror I recently discovered that I had inadvertently been helping to finance the genocide in Darfur. My own pension money had been in Fidelity Investments mutual funds. Fidelity has more than $1 billion invested in
Genocide is an expensive enterprise and more than 70 percent of oil revenues have been used by the government of Sudan to purchase weapons and train the janjaweed. These are the people and the weapons responsible for murdering Halima and Fatima's babies, along with more than 400,000 other people.
I have taught my children that with knowledge comes responsibility. Who among us would knowingly be complicit in the murder of innocent people? Just as I must take responsibility for where my savings are invested, we each share the responsibility for where our tax dollars and public funds are invested. Now, there is an important opportunity for Massachusetts' citizens to speak out. As of January, the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management Board held over $100 million in firms such as PetroChina and Sinopec.
