News Article by AFP posted on May 01, 2007 at 21:27:42: EST (-5 GMT)
WASHINGTON, May 1, 2007 (AFP) - Activists including US actress Mia Farrow launched on Tuesday a campaign to force Fidelity and Berkshire Hathaway to withdraw investments from Sudan over a humanitarian crisis in Darfur.
Farrow said she urged Fidelity Investments to divest, but the company took no responsibility for the mass killings in Darfur.
"I take responsibility as to what happens to my money," she said in a telephone conference call and added that she, like many people, had a retirement fund with Fidelity.
"I would beg everybody to do as I did: move your money out of Fidelity."
The campaign was launched by the Save Darfur Coalition, the Sudan Divestment Task force, by Fidelity out of Sudan and by the NAACP, the oldest and largest African-American civil rights group.
They plan a media blitz to sway shareholders as they gather for their annual meetings in Boston, Massachusetts, where Fidelity is located, and Omaha, Nebraska, home of Berkshire Hathaway.
The divestment coalition released what it said was part of Fidelity Investment's response to the groups' request to divest.
"Fidelity portfolio managers make their investment decisions based on business and financial considerations," the statement said.
Farrow, a UN goodwill ambassador, and several hundred others on Monday picketed outside the White House as part of a global day of action in 35 world capitals for the troubled Sudanese region on the fourth anniversary of the civil war there.
The conflict has cost 200,000 lives and forced two million people from their homes, according to the United Nations, though Khartoum contests those estimates, saying 9,000 people have died.
The coalition said it got a better reception from Berkshire Hathaway, whose chief officer, Warren Buffet, is a philanthropist. He sent tickets to members of the coalitions to attend the upcoming annual stockholders' meeting and discuss the issue there.
David Rubenstein, of the Save Darfur Coalition, said that Sudan has in the past been susceptible to foreign investment pressures.
He said the success of the divestment "really depends on what Fidelity and Berkshire Hathaway choose to do."
The campaign's pressure point is a Chinese oil company, PetroChina, because 70 to 80 percent of Sudan government oil receipts go to arming the Janjaweed militias, said the groups.
The militias are responsible for the mass killings, according to foreign governments and the United Nations.
Fidelity is the largest single investor in PetroChina, when counting only its shares on the New York Stock Exchange, the coalition said.
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