Bodies Removed From Mass Grave

Source: Inter Press Service

“War veterans” associated with the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party have exhumed at least a thousand decomposing bodies from an abandoned mine in Mount Darwin, 100 … [read more]

Zimbabwe’s Blood Diamonds

Source: Channel 4

Zimbabwe is supposedly enjoying political stability under the coalition government formed in 2008. However, Unreported World finds a country still gripped by terror and violence.

Reporter Ramita Navai and director Alex Nott film undercover to investigate claims that gems from one of the world’s biggest diamond fields are being used by Robert Mugabe’s Zanu PF party to entrench their hold on power by buying the military’s loyalty. This is against a backdrop of human rights abuses, which victims say are being perpetrated by the military and the police.

Filming covertly and secretly, the team discover a climate of fear reminiscent of the pre-coalition Mugabe years. Almost everyone Navai and Nott meet is too terrified to talk about the diamond fields, including several members of the MDC party, which forms part of the coalition government. Some people do speak out, at great personal risk, detailing stories of beatings, killings and rape connected to the diamond area.

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Blood and dirt

Zimbabwe’s finance minister, has described the 60,000-hectare Marange diamond field in the country’s east as “the biggest find of alluvial diamonds in the history of mankind”. Potential revenue is estimated at $1 billion-$1.7 billion a year, about half the crisis-ridden country’s total forecast GDP this year and enough to end its economic woes almost at a stroke. But if the revenue fell exclusively into the hands of President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF it could, critics argue, spell the return of a single-party dictatorship and end the present shaky power-sharing arrangement between Mr Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

This was the conundrum facing the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, the diamond trade’s international watchdog, when it recently met in Israel to decide whether to continue to ban the sale of Zimbabwe’s alleged “blood diamonds” or to let sales resume. Zimbabwe’s ministry of mines, controlled by ZANU-PF, reported earlier this month that it had stockpiled 4.6m carats of diamonds, worth some $1.7 billion, since the organisation suspended official sales in November after allegations that troops guarding the fields had, among other atrocities, massacred more than 200 suspected illegal panners.

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UK firm bids to reclaim its rights to Zimbabwean ‘blood diamond’ field

Talks ongoing between African Consolidated Resources and Harare over site where 200 may have died

By Ian Evans

THE British owners of a Zimbabwean mine at the centre of “blood diamond” allegations say they are still in tentative negotiations with Robert Mugabe’s government about re-taking ownership of the field.

Aim-listed African Consolidated Resources bought mining rights to the Marange diamond fields in February 2006 but was evicted eight months later. That prompted illegal public mining of the site, followed by a violent and bloody backlash by the Zimbabwean military in which it is alleged 200 people were killed.

After it was evicted, ACR launched a legal battle to challenge the decision and regain control of the 100,000-acre field. Last week, it won its case in the Zimbabwe high court when Justice Charles Hungwe told the state-owned Zimbabwe Mining Development Corporation, now in possession of the site, to stop mining the fields, and ordered the power-sharing government to restore ownership to the firm.

The court decision represents a significant victory for ACR, which says it wants to set up a joint venture with the government. But the administration has signalled that it may appeal; it had drawn up a shortlist of two unnamed foreign mining firms which it wants to run the mines instead. ACR finance director Roy Tucker said: “It’s a sensitive issue and we have to be careful what is said about this. There have been talks with officials and we hope there will be a resolution in weeks, not months.”

Following ACR’s departure from the site in 2006, thousands of amateur prospectors descended on Chiadzwa in the Marange district. Men and women armed with spades and sieves dug wherever they wanted, overseen by local police taking bribes. However, concerned that the government was not getting a cut, President Mugabe sent in army, police and security agents to re-take the site.

The crackdown saw widespread arrests, beatings and killings of anyone suspected of involvement in unsanctioned diamond mining or smuggling. Soldiers threw up a massive cordon around the diamond fields as the military were given free rein in return for wealth and, some say, continued support for the Mugabe regime.

On 26 June, the New York-based pressure group Human Rights Watch cited accounts from more than 100 witnesses, miners, police officers, soldiers and children alleging human rights abuses by troops. It said its researchers had gathered evidence of mass graves and accounts of an incident in which military helicopters fired on miners while armed soldiers on the ground chased villagers away.

The military are now accused of press-ganging local people to mine for them in return for a pittance. Villages and towns deemed too close to the diamond fields were demolished and their residents forced to move away.

At the height of the mini-boom and before the military crackdown, the nearby city of Mutare, 60 miles north, was seen as a “wild west” town with cash-rich miners flaunting their wealth in new goods, cars and US dollars. The diamonds would be smuggled out through the nearby Mozambique border where dealers from Lebanon, Belgium, Iraq, Mauritania and the Balkans were waiting to buy in cash.

Monitors from the Kimberley Process, an international watchdog on diamond mining, visited the area in the summer to investigate the “blood diamond” claims. The term usually refers to diamonds mined in conflict areas, the profits from which are used to finance war, insurgency or violence.

However the working party that visited Marange at the start of July has so far failed to make a public recommendation on whether Zimbabwe should be suspended from its certification process. Bernhard Esau, chairman of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, said last month: “The team provided the KPCS and Zimbabwe with an interim update in July but is yet to produce its final report. No final decision has yet been taken. The chairman has not made any unilateral decision on Zimbabwe and there was no attempt to pre-empt KPCS procedures.”

After the July visit, Zimbabwe’s official Herald newspaper said troops would withdraw from the area, but there have been no reports that this has taken place.

ACR’s Tucker said: “We want to get back on site, which will need improved security and transparency of operations. That means no illegal business or side deals.

“There’s been a lot of coverage on what’s happened in Marange and the Kimberley Process but we want to manage it in a proper way. At one stage there were 15,000 people mining there with picks and shovels, digging holes to get at the diamonds.”

ACR gained property rights to the area after De Beers let its licence expire. Tucker said that diamonds at the mine were “frosted”, giving the impression that they were less valuable industrial-grade diamonds.

He added: “We think others missed a trick – we knew their real worth, but we’ve never been able to mine there. We’re still waiting on the full judgment from the court, but we hope we can resolve the issue with the government. We’ll have to fulfil some spending obligations at the mine, but we think that can be sorted.”

WDC calls for action on Zimbabwe

Blood diamonds team wraps up second Zim inspection

An team of inspectors from an anti-blood diamonds body was wrapping up a visit to Zimbabwe on Friday, where they have been investigating allegations of gross rights abuses in diamond mining.

The United Nations-founded Kimberley Process is a body that monitors international trade in diamonds with a view to barring so-called conflict or blood diamonds — gems that are used to bankroll conflicts.

Kimberley Process inspectors arrived in Zimbabwe on Monday for a review visit following a first fact-finding mission to the controversial eastern Marange diamond fields in March. They were due to leave the country on Saturday.

Zimbabwe’s police and military are accused of gross human rights abuses in the Marange area since 2006, including killing and injuring dozens of illegal diamond-diggers and forcing villagers to work for them.

In a recent report, New York-based Human Rights Watch alleged the security forces, who are loyal to President Robert Mugabe, had killed more than 200 people in a three-week crackdown on illegal mining last year and ordered some of the bodies to be buried in mass graves.

The area is still under control of the military, whose members are lining their pockets with the gems, according to Human Rights Watch.

While admitting members of the military are enriching themselves, Zimbabwe’s government says they carried out “no killings.”

Human Rights Watch is calling for the definition of conflict diamonds to be expanded to include diamonds mined in conditions of gross rights violations.

Zimbabwe says the absence of an armed conflict means the diamonds cannot be classed conflict diamonds.

Attempts to reach the Kimberley Process team in Zimbabwe this week were unsuccessful.

The state-controlled daily Herald quoted Kpandel Fayia, the Liberian deputy mines minister heading the team, as saying that the government had been “very open” with the team during its investigation. The Process would deliver its report on Zimbabwe within a month, he said.

Fayia was also quoted by the paper as saying the state mining company, which controls the fields after the state seized them from a private company, operated in a “crude” way, with workers sorting stones by hand in the open.

The team also met some of the victims of the military crackdown.

“We took them [Kimberley Process team] to see victims of the clean-up,” the mayor of the nearby city of Mutare, Brian James, told the German Press Agency dpa. “There were quite a few people whose family members had been killed, victims who had gunshot wounds …”

James is a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change, which demanded this week that the coalition government and Parliament set up a commission of inquiry into the events in Marange. — Sapa-dpa/Mail & Guardian

HRW Report blames military for killings, forcing children into labor

Zimbabwe’s armed forces are engaging in the forced labor of children and adults, and are torturing and beating local villagers on the diamond fields of Marange district in eastern Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch said in a report released yesterday. The military, which remains under the control of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), the former ruling party, killed more than 200 people in a violent takeover of the diamond fields in late 2008.

The 62-page report, “Diamonds in the Rough: Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe,” documents how, following the discovery of diamonds in Marange in June 2006, the police and army have used brutal force to control access to the diamond fields and to take over unlicensed diamond mining and trading. Some income from the fields has been funneled to high-level party members of ZANU-PF, which is now part of a power-sharing government that urgently needs revenue as the country faces a dire economic crisis.

“The police and army have turned this peaceful area into a nightmare of lawlessness and horrific violence,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Zimbabwe’s new government should get the army out of the fields, put a stop to the abuse, and prosecute those responsible.”

In February 2009, Human Rights Watch researchers conducted more than 100 one-on-one interviews with witnesses, local miners, police officers, soldiers, local community leaders, victims and relatives, medical staff, human rights lawyers, and activists in Harare, Mutare, and Marange district in eastern Zimbabwe.

Those interviewed said that police officers, who were deployed in the fields from November 2006 to October 2008 to end illicit diamond smuggling, were in fact responsible for serious abuses – killings, torture, beatings, and harassment – often by so-called “reaction teams,” which drove out illegal miners.

“Three policemen on horseback raided us while we worked in the diamond fields and immediately fired their shotguns at us,” one miner told Human Rights Watch, in describing a “reaction team” raid. “I was shot in the left thigh. Two of my friends were shot and killed during that raid.”

The report also examines the army’s violent takeover of the Marange diamond fields in late October 2008 in Operation Hakudzokwi (No Return), which was an attempt by the military to impose order on the fields. The operation began on October 27, 2008 as military helicopters with mounted automatic rifles flew over Chiadzwa, a part of Marange, and began to drive out local miners. Soldiers indiscriminately fired live ammunition and tear gas into the diamond fields and into surrounding villages. On the ground, hundreds of soldiers indiscriminately fired AK-47 assault rifles, without giving any warning. In the panic and ensuing stampede, some miners were trapped and died in tunnels. Over three weeks, the military assault resulted in the brutal deaths of more than 200 people. Soldiers forced miners to dig mass graves for many of the dead.

One local miner said of the massacre: “Soldiers in helicopters started firing live ammunition and tear gas at us. We all stopped digging and began to run toward the hills to hide. I noticed that there were many uniformed soldiers on foot pursuing us. From my syndicate, 14 miners were shot and killed that morning.”

The police and military have been given access to Marange’s mineral wealth at a time when the government has struggled to pay their wages. Human Rights Watch’s research suggests that revenue from the gems has also enriched senior ZANU-PF officials and provided an important revenue stream for the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, which has underwritten some military operations.

Army brigades are still being rotated into Marange. Under military control, hundreds of children and adults endure forced labor for mining syndicates, while soldiers continue to torture and beat villagers, accusing them of either being or supporting illegal miners who are not working for the army.

One 13-year-old girl told Human Rights Watch: “Every day, I would carry ore and only rest for short periods. … We always started work very early in the morning before eight and finished when it was dark after six. All I want now is to go back to school.”

ZANU-PF, which was in sole control of the government until February 2009, has either failed to or decided not to effectively regulate the diamond fields while exploiting the absence of clear legal ownership of the gemstones. The party’s mismanagement of the diamond fields has taken place amidst failed economic policies that have resulted in astronomically high inflation rates in Zimbabwe, which has teetered on the verge of bankruptcy.

While Zimbabwe’s new power-sharing government, formed in February 2009, now lobbies the world for development aid, millions of dollars in potential government revenue are being siphoned off through illegal diamond mining, smuggling of gemstones outside the country, and corruption. The new government could generate substantial amounts of revenue from the diamonds to fund a significant portion of Zimbabwe’s economic recovery program if the diamond industry were legally regulated and operated with greater transparency and accountability.

Human Rights Watch urged the power-sharing government to remove the military from Marange and restore security responsibilities to the police, but ensure that the police abide by internationally recognized standards of law enforcement and use of lethal force. The power-sharing government should also appoint a local police oversight committee, open an impartial and independent investigation into the serious human rights abuses committed, and hold accountable all those found to be responsible.

Human Rights Watch called on the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), an international group governing the global diamond industry, to press Zimbabwe, a participant, to end the smuggling of diamonds, and ensure that all diamonds from Marange are lawfully mined, documented, and exported in compliance with KPCS standards. Human Rights Watch said the KPCS should urgently review and broaden the definition of “conflict diamonds” to include diamonds mined in the context of serious and systematic human rights abuses.

Human Rights Watch also urged South Africa, both as member of the KPCS and as chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), to press for speedy reforms and policy changes that will stop the export of smuggled diamonds from Marange into South Africa and other countries, given the serious human rights abuses involved.

“A very clear statement by South Africa calling for a ban on Marange diamonds would not only protect Zimbabweans from abuse in the Marange diamond fields, but help South Africa to protect its own diamond industry,” said Gagnon. “South Africa needs to press Zimbabwe to improve the transparency and accountability of its diamond trade.” – HRW

The return of blood diamonds

By Daniel Howden|The Independent

Six years ago, the world came together to stop a trade in gems that was fuelling civil war in Africa. Now the architect of the deal has quit, warning that jewels ‘have blood all over them’ again.

The leading architect of the international system to stop the trade in blood diamonds has warned that the safety net is close to collapse with governments and the industry failing to act against gross violations.

Ian Smillie, the “grandfather” of the landmark Kimberley Process, that was agreed in response to appalling civil wars in Africa fuelled by illegal gems, said he had “stomped out” on his scheme as it was no longer working.

“It isn’t regulating the rough diamond trade,” the Canadian expert said yesterday. “It is in danger of becoming irrelevant and it’s letting all manner of crooks off the hook.”

The Kimberley safeguards came into effect in 2003 and helped restore consumer confidence in precious stones. Today they regulate 99.98 per cent of the rough diamond trade, but if the process loses credibility, experts say criminals will re-enter the trade with conflict diamonds quickly reappearing in shops in London, Paris and New York.

Mr Smillie was one of the authors of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), the UN-backed agreement credited with breaking the link between the diamond trade and vicious conflicts, mainly in southern and western Africa. His comments came as the 49 members of the Kimberley Process – made up of governments, industry and civil society – met in Namibia with a growing list of concerns.

Top of those is Zimbabwe, where hundreds of diamond miners were massacred by the army as the government effectively militarised a key mining area late last year. Some in the industry have questioned whether Zimbabwe’s gems match the definition of conflict diamonds as they are helping to fund a government, not a rebel army, but Mr Smillie rejected this: “They are blood diamonds, they have blood all over them.”

Zimbabwe is not alone and a host of other cracks have emerged in the system of safeguards meant to “ensure that diamond purchases were not funding violence”. Monitors have pointed to the illegal trade flourishing in Ivory Coast, Guinea, Venezuela and Lebanon.

One-hundred percent of Venezuela’s diamonds are being smuggled, according to the UK-based Global Witness; Guinea has reported an unfeasible 500 per cent increase in diamond production year on year; and Lebanon is exporting more rough diamonds than it imports despite having no local deposits. None of those countries have been suspended from the process and while inspection teams have been dispatched and reports commissioned, no action has been taken.

“The Kimberley Process is always the last to wake up and smell the coffee,” Mr Smillie complained. It was claimed that he had “retired” from his role as one of the group’s chief monitors earlier this year but the Canadian dismissed this report, saying he had “stomped out”. “If it was working I would be there in Windhoek arguing with them or celebrating with them… but governments want to pretend that it is working.” He said the mantra of KPCS has become “let’s not do anything now” and accused them of “fiddling while Rome burns”.

The KPCS is under strong pressure to act against Zimbabwe. “Hundreds of miners have been killed by their own government,” said Annie Dunnebacke, lead campaigner from Global Witness. “How can that country still be part of the Kimberley Process? What’s the point of having a stick if the stick is never used? Zimbabwe should be suspended.”

The Namibia meeting which ends today has agreed to send an inspection team to the troubled southern African nation next week but it’s unlikely they will be given serious access to the Marange area where the killings occurred. Inspectors have privately admitted that people they want to interview have been arrested or intimidated already.

Global Witness and Mr Smillie’s Partnership Canada-Africa NGO were among the pressure groups who put blood diamonds on the agenda of the UN Security Council in 2000. At that stage rough gems were helping to pay for vicious civil wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola that cost hundreds of thousands of lives.

A UN resolution in December 2000 launched the Kimberley Process, and it was signed three years later. On its own website the organisation trumpets its success: “Diamond experts estimate that conflict diamonds now represent a fraction of one per cent of the international trade in diamonds, compared to estimates of up to 15 per cent in the 1990s. That has been the Kimberley Process’s most remarkable contribution to a peaceful world.”

The key to that success was ensuring that it reached all countries involved in the trade. Its future depends on ensuring there are no grey areas for blood diamonds to exploit. “Diamonds travel quickly,” explained Mr Smillie.

The consequences of a collapse of the Kimberley Process would be twofold, he warned. “The diamond trade would go back to its criminal past and rebel armies would have no problem finding buyers for their blood diamonds. The potential for diamonds fuelling conflict would be back,” he said.

*This article was first published in The Independent Thursday 25 June,2009.