MIT’s Divestment from Sudan

GSC & UA endorse targeted divestment from Sudan!

To:  President Susan Hockfield and the Advisor Committee on Shareholder Responsibility

Petition for MIT’s Divestment from Sudan


WHEREAS

(1) The government of Sudan has engaged in a policy of genocide against its own non-Arab population in Darfur through use of its military and through sponsorship of attacks by armed militias known as the janjaweed;

(2) The Sudanese government is responsible for the death of 400,000 Darfurians and displacement of 2.5 million more1;

(3) The U.S. State Department and both chambers of Congress have declared that the Sudanese regime of dictator Omar al-Bashir is committing genocide2;

(4) Certain international companies, by conducting business operations in Sudan, bring direct foreign investment dollars to Khartoum and provide both moral and political cover to the Sudanese regime;

(5) Khartoum has funneled large portions of direct foreign investment into military expenditures used to perpetuate the genocide while neglecting needed development projects in the Darfur region3;

(6) The government of Sudan has a history of remedying egregious behavior in response to economic pressure4;

(7) The policy and practice of genocide is abhorrent to the moral and political values of the members of MIT;


We, the undersigned, request the Massachusetts Institute of Technology divest from offending companies doing business with the genocidal government in Sudan immediately (no later than December 31st 2006).


1 Darfur Mortality Study, Table. Coalition of International Justice. Published: April 21, 2005.
http://www.cji.org/pdf/CIJ_Mortality_table_21_april_2005.pdf
2 House Concurrent Resolution 467 and Senate Concurrent Resolution 124
3 Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights. Human Rights Watch. 2003.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/sudanprint.pdf
4 Silverstein, Ken. “Official Pariah Sudan Valuable to America's War on Terrorism.”
Los Angeles Times. Published: April 29, 2005. p. A1.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

The MIT’s Divestment from Sudan Petition to President Susan Hockfield and the Advisor Committee on Shareholder Responsibility was created by and written by Kayvan Zainabadi (kayvan@mit.edu).  This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors. For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

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