EU boycotts China oil firm over funding of Darfur regime

By Kim Sengupta
Monday, 17 March 2008


The European Parliament has disinvested in a firm accused of being one of the chief bankrollers of the Sudanese regime's military campaign in Darfur after pressure from MEPs and human rights activists.


The Independent can reveal that, in a significant step in boycotting firms whose revenues are said to fuel the genocide, the EU has sold its shares in the Chinese oil giant PetroChina/ CNPC. The move follows revelations that MEPs' pension funds continued to be invested in the company, despite widespread criticism of Chinese support for the regime in Khartoum.

The decision strengthens the international campaign to apply pressure on the Sudanese government over the continuing killings, rapes and forced evictions in Darfur by its own troops and the Janjaweed militia which colludes with state forces.

China is the foremost foreign investor in Sudan and a main supplier of weapons. It buys two thirds of Sudanese oil output.

Eighty Nobel laureates, politicians and artists have written to the Chinese President Hu Jintao urging greater action on Darfur. The actors George Clooney and Mia Farrow, as well as the film director Steven Spielberg, who recently withdrew from his role as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, have been among those highlighting the suffering resulting from some of the Chinese-linked revenue.

The Independent revealed last week that the conflict in Darfur had entered a violent and deadly new phase. Internal reports by humanitarian agencies operating in the region reveal that the active Sudanese government-backed military phase of the conflict, thought to have ended early in 2005, has resumed, with horrifying consequences. Read more >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>