Your Investments Might Be Financing Genocide

Another young mother, Fatima, told how she had fled her burning village with her baby tied to her back. When the janjaweed shot her, the bullet passed through the child, killing him.

During my visit, I watched a small boy, shot in the lungs, struggling to breathe, and I saw others whose eyes had been gouged out with knives.

So you can imagine my horror when I recently discovered that I had inadvertently been helping to finance the genocide in Darfur. My own pension money was in Fidelity Investments mutual funds. Fidelity has immense holdings in PetroChina Co. and Sinopec Corp., two oil companies that have poured billions of dollars into Khartoum's coffers.

From 70 percent to 80 percent of the oil revenue, according to Human Rights Watch, has been used by the government of Sudan to purchase assault helicopters, bombers, armored vehicles and small arms, as well as to train and arm the janjaweed - the people and weapons responsible for murdering Halima's and Fatima's babies, along with more than 400,000 other people.