Tomas, I believe that a lot of the statements that Talisman has published it has no choice but to release per the Sudanese Government. Now that int'l pressure is rising to resolve the Sudanese Civil War/Genocide, this may actually make Talisman's Sudanese assets more valuable in the long run.... However Fidelity should hang its head in shame for owning so much Talisman stock....
When will we act on Sudan's slave trade?
By Charles Jacobs
The Boston Globe
April 23, 2001
ON MARCH 28, I flew illegally into South Sudan to witness the redemption of 2,952 enslaved black women and children and one man. With me were former Washington, D.C., delegate to Congress Walter Fauntroy and radio personality Joe Madison. In Sudan for four days we watched several mass emancipations and spoke to dozens of slaves.
An Islamist holy war in Sudan has rekindled the slave trade there. Decades after the British stopped most Arab raids in Africa's largest country, the Islamic fundamentalist regime in Khartoum is employing slave raids in order to impose Koranic Law on all Sudanese. It is estimated that 100,000 black slaves, mostly from the Dinka tribes, now serve Arab masters in Sudan.
Slavery is a crime against humanity, and acting forthrightly against it ruffles the feathers of diplomats, stings big oil interests, and deeply embarrasses the slanderously compliant United Nations. As Madeleine Albright told me over a year ago, ''America doesn't say certain things about Sudan because if we did, we would have to act, and we are not prepared to act.'' But someone must act.
Christian Solidarity International, a Swiss-based rights group, has been assisting a local Arab-African peace effort that redeems African slaves for cash raised in Europe and America. My organization, American Anti-Slavery Group, has for years supported the International's Underground Railroad. It was time for me to see for myself.
On March 30, in northern Bahr el Ghazal in the heart of the slave-raiding area I met Abuk Gar. She was sitting under a tree, along with hundreds of Dinka women and children who were brought back from bondage by friendly Arab retrievers who want no part of Khartoum's policy. Nine years ago, when Abuk was 14, she awoke to gunshots, saw her parents cut down outside her home, and was enslaved along with the boys and girls of her village.
Abuk was tied by the wrists, roped in a line and forced-marched north. Once outside the scene of plunder and murder, the rapes began. Four girls who resisted were dragged before all to see, and as a warning had their throats cut. Abuk did not resist. And so every day on the 10-day march she was gang-raped.
Aluth Dadut is a stately woman of 32. When the jihad-raiders stormed her village, three of her children were killed trying to escape. She said that 20 men raped her on the march north. She was given to a man, Achmed, who made her his concubine. Aluth now back in Dinka-land wanted desperately to find her husband and give the baby she bore in bondage a Dinka name. She had no doubt her husband would accept her and the baby. ''He loves me, he would not have wanted me killed resisting them,'' she said.
I met women whose chests were slashed with knives when they did not move fast enough for their masters. Achan Malwal Kuoat was taken in a sunset raid. Her husband was shot on the spot. One day in captivity she was too exhausted to tend the master's goats, so he stabbed her. Luel, a little girl about 10, told me she lost her brothers and sisters in the raids. Then she showed me where they slashed her neck when she was too tired to work.
The lone man among the slaves could be the saddest person I ever met. We asked him why he was alive - all the other men were either killed during the raid or on the march north. He told us that he decided to be the most docile, servile person in order to survive. He told John Eibner, the international's slave redemption chief, that he is ashamed to have acted this way, as many of the other men and boys were killed showing pride.
Fauntroy and Madison are returning to the nation's capital to complain. What can we do in Boston? Learn, teach, lobby, and organize, surely. But there is a local issue. Oil profits flowing to Khartoum are fueling mass murder and slavery. Talisman Energy of Canada, Khartoum's main partner, built a pipeline that sucks oil from under African feet and pumps the profits into Khartoum's war machine.
Millions of Americans have been made unknowing partners to the slave trade in Sudan because mutual funds or pension funds they hold contain Talisman stock. We have led a divestment campaign against this slave-oil and so far the pension funds of New York City, New Jersey, California, the Texas Teacher's Retirement fund, and TIAA-CREF - the world's largest retirement fund, have sold off their Talisman shares. But Fidelity Investments of Boston has become a huge shareholder of Talisman stock, refuses to divest its mutual funds, and refuses to meet with us.
Boston is a long way from Bahr el Ghazal, but it was the center of abolitionism when black slaves walked in chains. Surely, Fidelity, a strong force for good in the community, will want to stay faithful to its principles. Perhaps when the fund managers read about the slaves I talked to, they will make the right decision. How can they not?
Charles Jacobs is president of the American Anti-Slavery Group. |
