Last year, a non-binding resolution was overwhelmingly passed in the Vermont Senate calling for Vermont to join Illinois, New Jersey and Oregon in divesting it’s state pension funds from corporations doing business with, and therefore economically enabling, the genocidal Sudanese government. Nearly a year later, Vermont still has holdings of nearly $3,000,000 in Schlumberger Ltd, a powerhouse Austrian-based multinational that runs oilfields in Sudan, as well as several other countries.

UVM voted a few days ago to divest it’s holdings in such companies. Other states and universities are joining (or have joined) the divestment movement. The counter argument, as we heard in the debate on divestment from apartheid, is that divestment will economically impact the poor, and bring more suffering to those who are already hurting. It is a reasonable argument that would seem to make the situation ambiguous. However, as with apartheid, when the correct next step is ambiguous, rather than paternalistically attempt to judge from afar what is best for the victims in Sudan’s Darfur province, we should instead turn to the survivors and activists from that region to ask how they would have us aid in their plight.

And they say divest.

For some background, if you’re not aware (from Salon):

For more than three years, the Janjaweed, backed by the Sudanese government, have waged a brutal war against two rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement. In a vicious campaign, labeled genocide by the U.S. in 2004, they have murdered tens of thousands of civilians who belong to the same ethnic groups as the rebels…

…Yet the U.N., the U.S. and the European Union have consistently failed to take any serious punitive actions against the Sudanese government. The U.S. has pushed for a stronger world response to the crisis, but its diplomatic efforts have continued to flounder…

…The Bush administration may be talking tough on Darfur, but critics say its war on terror has caused it to act with trepidation. Since the ’90s, when it harbored Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida, Sudan has been designated a terror state by the U.S., meaning American companies, with few exceptions, have not been allowed to operate there. But in recent years, U.S. intelligence has turned to Sudanese officials, including some considered architects of the Darfur genocide, for information on suspects in the global war on terror. Critics charge that the U.S. has been reluctant to take tough action because of the Sudanese government’s strategic importance in the fight against al-Qaida.

The divestment movement has been assisted in recent weeks by a dramatic ratcheting up of coverage in the popular media. Hollywood stars like George Clooney have become very active on the issue, and his television alma mater ‘ER’ has been showcasing the situation there in it’s current story arc. Last week, five Democratic US Representatives were arrested during a protest of the Sudanese government’s policy of genocide — including the Congress’s lone holocaust survivor, Rep. Tom Lantos.

It is as if something has collectively popped among the general US public, which has offered little recognition and outrage up to this point. As if this was a back page story that was supposed to have passed into history by now, and the amazement that it is still being allowed to continue in the face of 400,000 dead (through the most horrific means) and millions more displaced, is finally giving way to shock and rage.

Reading about a sociopathic corporation like Schlumberger brings up disturbing reminiscences of Syriana, but it is one of several foreign companies on watch lists like this one, which include Royal Dutch Shell — a familiar name not only to US drivers, but for international Human Rights watchdogs. In fact, Schlumberger was one of the companies at the table with Dick Cheney discussing how the spoils of the Iraq War were to be divided (according to this piece from the Wall Street Journal), while all the while the administration was insisting the Iraq invasion had nothing to do with oil.

US companies are currently not legally able to do business in Sudan because it’s on terrorist watch lists at the State Department. This makes the economic card a bit more complicated. China, Russia and India (the former two having UN Security Council veto power) have consistently blocked action against Khartoum (Salon again):

Putting pressure on Chinese companies like PetroChina and Sinopec means that those companies wouldn’t have to actually withdraw from the country for the divestment to have an effect. John Prendergast, senior advisor for theInternational Crisis Group, explains: “The likelihood of the Chinese withdrawing investment in the Sudan is nil. One of the objectives of divestment would be to reduce the share price of publicly traded Chinese oil companies, raising alarm bells in Beijing, and forcing the Chinese in its own interest to go to the Sudanese government and say: ‘Enough is enough.’ There has to be a cost, and the cost has to be reducing their share price, reducing the value of their company, because investors would, in mass, head for the exits.”

Currently, Treasurer Spaulding is (from Seven Days):

participating in a working group with other state treasurers’ offices and public pension funds to try to be “agents of positive change” in Sudan. Their approach appears to be more one of “constructive engagement” with companies that do business in Sudan, rather than blanket divestment,

Spaulding is a very good guy, but this sort of engagement is not what is called for here, and in fact activists have put together a “targeted divestment” strategy that goes after companies supporting the regime, rather than supporting the populace. In fact, the case for divestment is probably stronger than it was for South Africa, given the immediacy of a full-blown, officially sanctioned campaign of human extermination.

And, as Salon again says:

Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Committee on Conscience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, sees such efforts as important for raising awareness in the U.S., as much as putting economic pressure on the Sudanese government: “It helps alert a wider audience to the issue, and the seriousness of the issue. That is its primary benefit. In terms of an actual effect on the Sudanese government itself, any effect it will have, I think, will be in the long term.” …

…Yet the activists say that the only way to put economic pressure on the country is to take on the companies doing business there. “The U.S. is left without its biggest economic stick now,” says Miller. “What are we going to do? We can’t do anything more from a government standpoint on the economic side. So far, the Sudanese government has felt nada, zip, zero economic pressure.

So, the Treasurer’s office should do the right thing and dump this stock immediately. If Spaulding still feels hesitant, the legislature should return to this issue now – before the session is over. We should in no way shape or form allow ourselves to become even remotely morally complicit in this:

… for a moment.

Here is the contact information for the Treasurer’s office:

Vermont State Treasurer • 109 State Street • Montpelier, Vermont 05609 • 802-828-2301

And you can find your Representative and Senators contact info here.