AS ZIMBABWE’s new power-sharing government lobbies the world for donor aid to revive its shattered economy, millions of euro in potential government revenue are being siphoned off through illegal diamond mining by security forces, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The country’s military, which remains under the control of president Robert Mugabe’s party, has also killed more than 200 illegal miners in taking over the diamond fields in the east of the country, the rights group alleged in a report released yesterday on abuses in Zimbabwe’s Marange district.
HRW has documented how, last year, security forces brutally took over the diamond fields discovered in 2006 and forced local men, women and children to mine the gems. To gather the information, researchers conducted over 100 interviews with witnesses from the community and security forces, as well as medical staff and human rights lawyers.
It also alleges senior members of Mr Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party are benefiting from the illegal mining rather than the unity government, which the former ruling regime formed with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) parties last February.
"The new government could generate substantial amounts of revenue from the diamonds to fund a significant portion of Zimbabwe's economic recovery programme if the diamond industry were legally regulated and operated with greater transparency and accountability," said the report, Diamonds in the Rough: Human Rights Abuses in the Marange Diamond Fields of Zimbabwe.
HRW urged the power-sharing government to remove the military from Marange and called on the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, an international group governing the diamond industry, to press leaders to end the smuggling of diamonds.
“The police and army have turned this peaceful area into a nightmare of lawlessness and horrific violence,” said HRW Africa director Georgette Gagnon.
In one interview, a miner described how the army cleared the diamond fields. “Soldiers in helicopters started firing live ammunition and tear gas . . . We all stopped digging and began to run toward the hills to hide. I noticed there were many uniformed soldiers on foot pursuing us. From my syndicate, 14 miners were shot and killed that morning.”