Company sued for abetting Sudan genocide

November 9, 2001

A noted anti-slavery group has filed a $1 billion class action lawsuit against Talisman Energy, Inc. of Canada, alleging that the company – as a business partner with the government of Sudan – is guilty of aiding and abetting genocide in the northern African nation.

The Presbyterian Church of Sudan, along with two other individuals that were not named, filed the suit in federal court in the Southern District of New York yesterday. The suit charges Talisman with “violations of international law for participating in the ethnic cleansing of black and non-Muslim minorities in southern Sudan,” according to a statement issued Wednesday.

The American Anti-Slavery Group, which announced the suit, said one of its board members, Carey R. D’Avino, an attorney, in conjunction with a second lawyer, Stephen A. Whinston, filed the action.

Talisman “is a business partner of the radical Islamic regime in Sudan, which has been condemned by governments and human-rights groups for genocide, forced starvation and slavery,” said the statement.

D’Avino and Whinston are part of the legal team that successfully sued companies on behalf of the victims of Nazi slave labor camps during World War II.

“Talisman is on the front lines of human-rights abuses in southern Sudan, and it is time they are held accountable for their role in the brutal ‘jihad’ that is killing my people,” said the Rev. John Sudan Gaduel, pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Sudan.

In an effort to protect its oil fields, Talisman, the complaint alleges, “aided and abetted the fundamentalist Islamic government in its ongoing and self-proclaimed ‘jihad,'” said the statement. The company’s actions have allegedly contributed to the “massive civilian displacement, the burning of villages, churches and crops, and the murder and enslavement of innocent civilians,” said Charles Jacobs, president of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

“Today’s suit employs a new weapon – the courts of justice – in our campaign to stop slavery and slaughter by Sudan’s ruling terrorist regime,” Jacobs said yesterday. He added that Talisman “willfully and knowingly” allowed Sudanese government officials to use company roads and airfields “to wage this campaign.”

In July 1999, Jacobs’ organization launched a divestment campaign against Talisman, which prompted funds like TIAA-CREF, CALPERS and the State of New York to sell off stakes in the company.

Gaduel and Jacobs, accompanied by D’Avino and Whinston, announced the suit at a press conference at the office of the attorneys in New York City.

“This time around, the action wasn’t filed to correct a wrong from 50 years ago,” Jesse Sage, a spokesman for the group, said. “The abuses this action seeks to address are happening right now.”

Rebels are waging a decades-long civil war in Sudan to secure greater autonomy for the nation’s Christian and animist population in the south from the mostly Muslim north.