Wednesday, April 06, 2005

What can bloggers do about Darfur, Sudan?

Note this copy of a post April 6, 2005, by Gene at Harry's Place in the UK titled "What you can do about Darfur":

Here are a couple of practical ideas for anyone looking for ways to help stop the genocide in Darfur:

-- If you live in the US, urge your represenatives in Congress to support the 'Darfur Accountability Act' (S 495), which calls for a new UN Security Council resolution with sanctions, accelerated assistance to the African Union mission and a military no-fly zone in Darfur.

If you live in another country, see about supporting similar legislation in that country or in the EU.

-- Support divestment from Sudan at whatever level you can. As I posted last December, China is putting billions of dollars into investment, oil revenue and weapons which help sustain the Sudanese government's genocidal policies. I don't expect everyone to stop buying Chinese-made goods (the earnings from which provide those billions), but companies in China and elsewhere are strengthening the Sudanese government's ability to support the Darfur massacres.

Thanks to petitions and protests by students, Harvard University agreed to sell $4.4 million worth of shares in PetroChina -- a subsidiary of state-owned China National Petroleum -- which has invested more than $1 billion in the Sudanese government to secure oil outputs. According to divestsudan.org PetroChina is one of 83 publicly-traded companies doing business in Sudan.
- - -

Note, here is a copy of a comment I left at Gene's post today:

Hello and thanks to Gene and Sonic and others on this thread: it's refreshing for me to see a UK blog posting on what one can do about Darfur. I am in England and have posted almost daily on Darfur - along with Jim Moore and friends at http://passionofthepresent.org - since April of last year. Jim, as far as I am aware, was the first blogger to put the spotlight on Darfur and stay with it all the way. In August I started up a blog called Sudan Watch as a place in which to log events unfolding in Darfur and file my posts on UK/European news/blogs re Darfur at Jim's site because my main personal blog became swamped with Sudan posts from April-August. Over the past year, I've spent many an hour searching for British/European bloggers posting on Darfur. Disappointingly, they have been few and far between. Please, if any blogger outside the US posts on Darfur/Sudan do let me know and I will point to their post and link them in my sidebar.

Gene, do you, or any of your readers know of UK/European initiatives or how we in the UK can support similar legislation to the type you mention in your post? Apart from contacting various MPs - including my own - several times I've only found American initiatives to support.

I'd be pleased to spread the word on any info re UK/European initiatives, blogs, websites - or any news out of UK/Europe - concerning Darfur/Sudan. Please feel free to email me anytime or leave a comment at http://sudanwatch.blogspot.com

Thanks again. I have put a link to this post in my sidebar at Sudan Watch.

No comments: