Last year, Harvard University, after months of pressure from student activists, said it would sell an estimated $4.4 million stake in PetroChina, a subsidiary of China’s top oil and gas producer, China National Petroleum Co., because of its ties to the Sudanese government. PetroChina has invested more than $1 billion in a joint venture with Sudan to increase that country’s oil revenues.
Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Sudan’s western Darfur region erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when ethnic African tribes took up arms, accusing the Arab-dominated central government of neglect. The Sudanese government is accused of responding by unleashing Arab tribal militias known as Janjaweed to murder and rape civilians and lay waste to villages. The government denies the charge.
An estimated 180,000 people have died in the conflict — many from hunger and disease — and about 2 million others have been displaced.
— Associated Press
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