Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

Bills aim to keep Texas funds from Darfur
By Paige Cantrell
Daily Texan (U. Texas)
01/25/2007

(U-WIRE) AUSTIN, Texas — Money from state pension funds has been partially funding the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region through investments in middle-man international companies, but two bills filed in the Texas Legislature aim to end this practice.

Senate Bill 247 and House Bill 667 call for the divestment of state pension funds from companies actively investing in the Sudanese government. Board members from the University of Texas' anti-genocide student coalition, the White Rose Society, attended a press conference Wednesday morning at the Capitol to discuss the bipartisan bills, filed Jan. 19.

"This is going to be the best bet for change. We know from history that when you put economic pressure on a government that it works," said Kendal Martel, a White Rose board member and UT liberal arts undeclared sophomore.

An estimated 400,000 people have been killed, and about 2.75 million have been displaced from their homes by the Janjaweed, a militia supported by the Sudanese government, during the genocide aimed at eliminating all non-Arab people of the nation, said Rep. Corbin Van Arsdale, R-Houston.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston and Van Arsdale are sponsoring the legislation developed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force, a project of the Genocide Intervention Network. The task force brought the White Roses together with Ellis and Van Arsdale to file the legislation.

"Texas can't stand idle while thousands of innocent people are systematically slaughtered. And we shouldn't be funding Texans' retirements by investing in companies who fuel a genocide engine," Van Arsdale said.

The legislation intends to help put an end to the genocide by cutting off its foreign funding. However, the pension funds, the Employees Retirement Service and the Teacher Retirement Service, do not have to divest if the companies choose to stop investing in the Sudanese government, said Kenneth Besserman, legislative director for Ellis.

"If this bill passes in Texas, there will be a ripple effect across the country," Ellis said.

A national recognition of the crisis in Darfur was evident in President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday night when he pledged to "awaken the conscience of the world" to the genocide.

This April, the White Roses will host a human rights symposium which will focus on Darfur and will hand out 10,000 white roses on Holocaust Remembrance Day to serve as reminders of genocide worldwide, Martel said.

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