Harvard divests Chinese firm terror funding

Precedent setting decision seen as positive step to limit funding of genocide and terrorism

(Washington, D.C.): The Center for Security Policy welcomes Harvard University’s decision earlier this week to divest an estimated $4.4 million portfolio investment in PetroChina (a subsidiary of state-owned China National Petroleum Company) for its business activities in Sudan. The extensive energy operations in Sudan of PetroChina’s parent company make it one of the largest of the Khartoum regime’s estimated 93 multinational business partners.

According to Samantha Power, an expert on Sudan at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government: "This [divestment] sends a very important political message to the government of China, to the government of Sudan and to other institutions that are shareholders in Sudan and Sudanese oil investments."

Sudan has been designated by the U.S. State Department as both a state sponsor of terror and a sponsor of genocide. According to Harvard’s Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, the decision to divest PetroChina "reflects deep concerns about the grievous crisis that persists in the Darfur region of Sudan."

This decision comes in the wake of the Center for Security Policy’s publication last August of a study entitled the Terrorism Investments of the 50 States. This report analyzed 87 of the country’s most influential public pension funds and determined that they had virtually all invested in publicly traded companies active in state-sponsors of terror, notably including Sudan.

Students at Harvard and on other campuses responded to these findings – and the ensuing outrage of many American investors that their money might be used, however unwittingly, to provide life support for and otherwise to prop up Sudan’s regime. These student activists demanded an end to their universities’ endowments being invested in companies responsible (however indirectly) for fueling the Sudanese genocide with business operations there.

The Center for Security Policy’s DivestTerror.org initiative has been actively engaged in encouraging greater scrutiny of Harvard’s portfolio investments. Last September, a Center op.ed. article in the Harvard Crimson made the following stark challenge: "By divesting the stock of these companies, Harvard would send a clear signal to companies that provide large-scale revenue flows and advanced technologies, equipment and expertise to governments that support terrorism: Choose between your business in countries that threaten American security interests and attracting our investment in your company."

The Center’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., said today: "PetroChina has long been enabling activities in Sudan that offend and outrage most Americans. Harvard University has, by divesting PetroChina’s stocks from portfolio, created a model for every one of the Nation’s academic institutions and for the American people. The time has come for every shareholder in America to utilize the power of their investments to help win the War on Terror. An excellent way to start is by doing what Harvard has just done – identifying and acting against companies like PetroChina that, with their business activities, tend to underwrite terrorist-sponsoring regimes including, but not limited to, Islamist Sudan."

The Center for Security Policy (www.CenterforSecurityPolicy.org), founded in 1988, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization committed to the time-tested philosophy of promoting international peace through American strength. It accomplishes this goal by stimulating and informing national and international policy debates. The Center disseminates information, analyses, and policy recommendations via e-mail, fax and its newly designed Web site, as well as through published articles and electronic media interviews. Its principal audiences include: the U.S. and international security policy-making communities, the news media, the global business and financial sector and individuals interested in U.S. security policy. Additional information about the Divest Terror and Divest Sudan campaigns is also available at www.DivestTerror.org.