Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC)

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Capitol Hill Office 
2136 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C.
20515
(202) 225-8050 tel
(202) 225-3002 fax
(202) 225-1904 TTY for deaf and hard of hearing

District Offices
National Press Building
529 14th Street, N.W., Suite 900
Washington, D.C. 20045
(202) 783-5065 tel 
(202) 783-5211 fax


2041 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave., S.E.
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20020
(202) 678-8900 tel
(202) 678-8844 fax

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Norton at Press Conference Calls on D.C. Government To Divest from Darfur as a Darfur Divestment Bill is Introduced
September 21, 2006           

Washington, DC— Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and other Members of the Congressional Black Caucus at a press conference today announced the introduction of the Darfur Accountability and Divestment Act.  Norton, who was arrested at the Sudanese Embassy in May, pointed particularly to the Act’s provision to recognize and support the rights of cities, states, and universities to divest that has proved controversial and has stalled the Senate version of  the bill. She said local, state and university divestment was “the major catalyst for the success of the South African sanctions movement.” The Congresswoman called on the District of Columbia government to divest from companies doing business in Sudan, as other jurisdictions are doing.  Norton and three other leaders were arrested at the South African Embassy in 1984 before she was a Member of Congress, setting off a movement of thousands of arrests of celebrities and average citizens that eventually broke Republican resistance to South African sanctions and President Ronald Reagan’s refusal to sign a sanctions bill.            

Norton said, “Congress will go home next week with most of our vital work, even on appropriations, not done because Members put the priority on campaigning for their own reelections. In good conscience, the Congress, the administration and the world community must not take a break from the Darfur humanitarian crisis as long as Khartoum continues to refuse to permit United Nations (U.N.) troops into the country to stop genocide and concentration camp-type squalor for many of the 2.5 million refugees forced to leave their homes.”            

The Congresswoman said her arrests to protest Darfur’s genocide and for South African sanctions “were both necessary, but only one aspect of citizen pressure that can spur leaders to act. Our arrests for Darfur and South Africa got some public attention, but full public engagement is critical in a humanitarian crisis that has festered for years.  The divestment of cities, states and universities was critical to our success with South African sanctions.  I call upon the District to act in line with its own progressive tradition and join other localities that are divesting from Darfur.” 

           
Norton said she was relieved that President Bush had agreed this week to name another special envoy, Andrew Natsios, for Darfur.  However, she noted “the sad spectacle” of thousands of Sudanese marching on the U.S. embassy in Khartoum this week to protest Western pressure on the capital to accept 20,000 U.N. peacekeepers.  None of the U.N. force would be drawn from U.S. troops, but the protesters identified them with the CIA.  Norton said the “Khartoum resistance to the U.N. peacekeepers is pre-textual and a continuation of its role in genocide and fratricidal war, but we have made it easy for Khartoum to rally protestors following the squandering of our prestige and world leadership on the debacle of the U.S. invasion and continuing war in Iraq.  At the moment, there is no world leader or group of leaders to lead this fight.  Darfur remains a world crisis in search of leadership.”

 
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