DIVEST AND CONQUER

The Legislature’s Labor Committee has properly voted to direct the Maine State Retirement System to sell any holdings in Sudan because of its human-rights violations. The divestiture is largely symbolic – worth about $60 million – but symbols are important, especially when other states join in, as a half dozen are considering, and when the cause, highlighting barely mitigated genocide, is so worthy. When the bill is considered today in the Maine Senate, it should receive strong support.

The divestiture legislation, introduced by Sen. Ethan Strimling of Portland, has been much modified in committee to give the retirement system ample time to move funds and to ensure it acts in the best financial interests of its clients. The bill also excludes small investments inside large mutual funds. The point of LD 1758 is not to deny revenues to the retirement system but to declare that Maine won’t support a murderous regime.

The United States already has trade and other economic sanctions that prevent U.S. companies from supporting the Khartoum government, but, in a global economy, investments in one place can have surprising effects elsewhere. The campaign to withdraw financial support for companies doing business in or with the nation of Sudan is to close the escape hatches and build economic pressure.

Sudan has had a series of civil wars over the last 35 years that has killed about 2 million and displaced double that many. The conflict that emerged in 2003 in the western region of Darfur has so far killed tens of thousands and displaced nearly 2 million.

African Union troops have tried and failed to bring stability to the situation, and, as infrastructure such as clean water supplies has failed, the first signs of cholera are being seen there. Meanwhile, Sudan reportedly is sending proxy forces into Chad, according to Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times, to rape and kill members of the tribes that have been assaulted in Darfur.

Helping to punish the Khartoum government economically by joining with other states to persuade major companies to stop, for now, doing business in Sudan is an indirect but potentially effective way to influence the government. The alternative of doing nothing, of course, is worse. Maine lawmakers today should take the route of measured action.