Activists yesterday questioned Harvard’s motives in trading PetroChina shares on foreign markets.

“I see no reason for Harvard to hold anything but ADRs,” Eric Reeves, a Smith College professor and expert on Sudan, wrote in an e-mail yesterday. “[U]sing non-American exchanges for trading purposes seems mighty suspicious.”

In a statement yesterday afternoon, Benjamin B. Collins ’06 and Manav K. Bhatnagar ’06, who launched the campus divestment petition, said that they were unaware of Harvard’s overseas holdings in PetroChina.

“We hope that the Harvard Corporation and the President’s Office are more transparent about Harvard’s investments in Sudan in the future,” Collins and Bhatnagar wrote.

And the Boston-based American Anti-Slavery Group ratcheted up pressure on the University to drop its PetroChina holdings yesterday.

“Harvard should clearly state the full extent of its PetroChina stake,” the group’s associate director, Jesse A. Sage ’98, wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

“PetroChina is fueling these murders and there is no reason for Harvard to be providing financial or moral cover for Chinese government companies aiding [Sudanese leader] General Bashir’s ethnic cleansing campaign,” Sage wrote.

Matthew W. Mahan ’05, an organizer of the campaign to redirect senior gifts, said last night that “the symbolic value of divestment is not contingent upon share volume.”

“Harvard’s holdings are morally wrong,” Mahan said.

A United Nations spokesman estimated on Monday that over 180,000 have died in the conflict in the Darfur region in the past two years.

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.