LEXINGTON In the face of one of the great moral threats of our day, the Virginia legislature risks utter silence.

The issue concerns Darfur, a western province of the North African country of Sudan. The people of that deso late region have been attacked repeatedly by government troops and government-sponsored militias. The country's government claims 9,000 have died, but estimates run as high as 450,000. Women face the likelihood of rape every time they leave home to fetch water. Men don't go out lest they be killed.

It is so terrible that in 2004 then-Secretary of State Colin Powell called the situation "genocide," as President Bush and the U.S. Congress have repeatedly declared.

State after state has passed bills divesting of companies, many of them affiliated with China, doing business with the Sudanese government and thus contributing, if only in a small way, to the atrocities -- and China itself has been a major ally of oil-rich Sudan. From New York to Texas, Florida to Kansas, legislatures have pulled state funds.

But Virginia remains officially silent.

TWO BILLS were proposed to this year's General Assembly session, each providing for divesting the Virginia Retirement System of these companies. One bill, HB 556, patroned by Del. Shannon Valentine, died in committee. The second, SB 87, patroned by Sen. Ken Cuccinelli of Fairfax, was passed unanimously by the Senate but faces the threat of silence in the House of Delegates as the session draws to a close.

Last Monday, the Subcommittee on Compensation and Retirement of the Appropriations Committee heard support from a diversity of opinion from across the philosophical spectrum, including a teacher who is a beneficiary of the retirement system, a high school student, and representatives of the Jewish community, Family Foundation, and the Genocide Intervention Network. The committee discussed the issue briefly and then took no action at all.

No action means silence in the face of genocide.

Some think Sudan is so far away that what we do won't matter. Yet Virginia has many ties with the country. Alexandria, Richmond, and Roanoke are all homes to so-called "Lost Boys" and other exiles who escaped the civil war that has engulfed the country for nearly 40 years. The newly elected Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan spent six months in Covington before then studying at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Hundreds of Episcopal congregations, to name only one denomination, support the work of the church there. Partly as a result of these connections, each of the three Episcopal dioceses in Virginia passed resolutions commending the two bills before the legislature.

Consider another angle. On 9/11, around 3,000 died and the United States had the sympathy of the world. In Darfur, some 150 times that number have perished, and the number keeps growing. Shouldn't we care, as we have been cared for?

WILL OUR efforts have any effect? After all, few would recognize, much less invest in, these companies (see www.sudandivestment.org). Only about one-fourth of 1 percent of Virginia's retirement holdings might be involved. What we do is little, and painless, enough.

Yet the experience of confronting apartheid in South Africa proves that international influence, including economic pressure, can produce change.

So it is now. Just last week, an official of the Sudanese government, astonishingly enough, asked the Chinese government not to invest in his own country. "The lives of the innocent Darfurian people are at stake here," he said. "The message I gave to the Chinese is this: Do not invest in Darfur blood."

If, for the sake of the Darfurians, the Chinese shouldn't invest there, why should Virginians?

There is one more reason. All during their long civil war, which could resume at any moment, the Sudanese people have been pleading with the world -- especially the United States -- "do not forget us." They don't ask for intervention; they appeal for prayers, and for the sorts of help that we can offer.

This is one sort.

Silence forgets. Silence condones.

Delegates, break the silence. Bring SB 87 to the floor. Join the Senate's unanimity. Let the official voice of Virginia, the cradle of liberty, plead for justice and for peace in the most atrociously deadly region of our world today.
R. David Cox is an Episcopal priest. Contact him at (540) 463-1986 or rdavidcox@earthlink.net.