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Business Daily: Zimbabwe's Diamonds

08/06/2010

Zimbabwe's Diamonds

BBC World Service - Business Daily, Zimbabwe's Diamonds

Disturbing allegations about human rights abuse at a diamond field in Zimbabwe.

Diamonds may delight the eye, but they have also helped to fuel bloody conflicts. It's ten years now since the first attempts were made to stamp out the trade in what are known as 'blood diamonds', which are mined in order to make money to fund wars or violence.  It all started with a meeting of diamond-producing states at Kimberley in South Africa in 2000, which led to the setting up of the certification scheme called the Kimberley Process. Has the scheme succeeded?  

We hear serious concerns about diamond mining in Zimbabwe, from the human rights campaigner Farai Maguwu, in an interview  with Lesley Curwen recorded in March. He made allegations about torture, beatings and gang-rape carried out by soldiers from the Zimbabwe army, who control the area around the Chiadzwa mine. Last Thursday, Farai Maguwu was arrested by police, who allege that he gave false information on the Chiadzwa diamond field, to a monitor from the Kimberley Process.

Business Daily put the allegations to the Mines Minister of Zimbabwe, Obert Moses Mpofu. Despite repeated requests by the BBC, the Minister has not given a response. 

Ian Smillie, who helped to set up the Kimberley Process, describes the flaws in its structure and management, which led him to resign from its governing body last year.

But Ernest Blom, the president of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses, argues that on the whole, the Kimberley Process has  succeeded in its aim to stop diamond-mining which funds wars.

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