Permanent Fund aids genocide

To the editor:

I never thought I would be complicity in genocide. Accepting the Permanent Fund Dividend has made me an unwilling participant in crimes against humanity. While the people of Darfur are being eradicated, the Permanent Fund remains invested in companies doing business in the Sudan. The governor and state legislators did not act in this session to require the Permanent Fund to divest. Our state politicians refuse to make the current genocide in Darfur a priority and are knowingly contributing to this horrific act against humanity by their inaction.  

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda killed an estimated 900,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus by the hands of the Hutu extremists. Despite fewer people being killed daily in Darfur, the genocide is ongoing. Humanitarian groups are ineffective as the Sudanese government allows them into the country one month only to remove them the next, crippling efforts to provide long-term, sustainable aid.

If we are not going to stand up as humanitarian, then I refuse to be complicity in accepting blood money. I want my PFD to go for buying weapons and educating the people of Darfur to protect themselves from being ethnically cleansed. I would like to challenge each Alaskan to do the same. Genocide continues to destroy humanity through political, religious ideology and ethnic cleansing.

Alaskans should challenge our politicians and each other to take a stand for humanity. Stop genocide today.

Alfred L. Sellers            

Anchorage