HRW: Forced Labor and Torture in Zimbabwean Diamond FieldsZimbabwe’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 have said in a report. 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.”
***
Friday, July 18, 2008
Will China Send 300,000,000 People to Africa?
Robert Mugabe is their kind of boy. - With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.
- In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.
- Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.
- More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.
- Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent.
How China's taking over Africa, and why the West should be VERY worried
By ANDREW MALONE Daily Mail
Last updated at 11:41 PM on 17th July 2008
***On June 5, 1873, in a letter to The Times, Sir Francis Galton, the cousin of Charles Darwin and a distinguished African explorer in his own right, outlined a daring (if by today's standards utterly offensive) new method to 'tame' and colonise what was then known as the Dark Continent.'My proposal is to make the encouragement of Chinese settlements of Africa a part of our national policy, in the belief that the Chinese immigrants would not only maintain their position, but that they would multiply and their descendants supplant the inferior Negro race,' wrote Galton.'I should expect that the African seaboard, now sparsely occupied by lazy, palavering savages, might in a few years be tenanted by industrious, order-loving Chinese, living either as a semidetached dependency of China, or else in perfect freedom under their own law.'Despite an outcry in Parliament and heated debate in the august salons of the Royal Geographic Society, Galton insisted that 'the history of the world tells the tale of the continual displacement of populations, each by a worthier successor, and humanity gains thereby'.A controversial figure, Galton was also the pioneer of eugenics, the theory that was used by Hitler to try to fulfil his mad dreams of a German Master Race.Eventually, Galton's grand resettlement plans fizzled out because there were much more exciting things going on in Africa.But that was more than 100 years ago, and with legendary explorers such as Livingstone, Speke and Burton still battling to find the source of the Nile - and new discoveries of exotic species of birds and animals featuring regularly on newspaper front pages - vast swathes of the continent had not even been 'discovered'.Yet Sir Francis Galton, it now appears, was ahead of his time. His vision is coming true - if not in the way he imagined. An astonishing invasion of Africa is now under way.In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.Reminiscent of the West's imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries - but on a much more dramatic, determined scale - China's rulers believe Africa can become a 'satellite' state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.The strategy has been carefully devised by officials in Beijing, where one expert has estimated that China will eventually need to send 300 million people to Africa to solve the problems of over-population and pollution.The plans appear on track. Across Africa, the red flag of China is flying. Lucrative deals are being struck to buy its commodities - oil, platinum, gold and minerals. New embassies and air routes are opening up. The continent's new Chinese elite can be seen everywhere, shopping at their own expensive boutiques, driving Mercedes and BMW limousines, sending their children to exclusive private schools.The pot-holed roads are cluttered with Chinese buses, taking people to markets filled with cheap Chinese goods. More than a thousand miles of new Chinese railroads are crisscrossing the continent, carrying billions of tons of illegally-logged timber, diamonds and gold.The trains are linked to ports dotted around the coast, waiting to carry the goods back to Beijing after unloading cargoes of cheap toys made in China.Confucius Institutes (state-funded Chinese 'cultural centres') have sprung up throughout Africa, as far afield as the tiny land-locked countries of Burundi and Rwanda, teaching baffled local people how to do business in Mandarin and Cantonese.Massive dams are being built, flooding nature reserves. The land is scarred with giant Chinese mines, with 'slave' labourers paid less than £1 a day to extract ore and minerals.Pristine forests are being destroyed, with China taking up to 70 per cent of all timber from Africa.All over this great continent, the Chinese presence is swelling into a flood. Angola has its own 'Chinatown', as do great African cities such as Dar es Salaam and Nairobi.Exclusive, gated compounds, serving only Chinese food, and where no blacks are allowed, are being built all over the continent. 'African cloths' sold in markets on the continent are now almost always imported, bearing the legend: 'Made in China'.From Nigeria in the north, to Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Angola in the west, across Chad and Sudan in the east, and south through Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, China has seized a vice-like grip on a continent which officials have decided is crucial to the superpower's long-term survival.'The Chinese are all over the place,' says Trevor Ncube, a prominent African businessman with publishing interests around the continent. 'If the British were our masters yesterday, the Chinese have taken their place.'Likened to one race deciding to adopt a new home on another planet, Beijing has launched its so-called 'One China In Africa' policy because of crippling pressure on its own natural resources in a country where the population has almost trebled from 500 million to 1.3 billion in 50 years.China is hungry - for land, food and energy. While accounting for a fifth of the world's population, its oil consumption has risen 35-fold in the past decade and Africa is now providing a third of it; imports of steel, copper and aluminium have also shot up, with Beijing devouring 80 per cent of world supplies.Fuelling its own boom at home, China is also desperate for new markets to sell goods. And Africa, with non-existent health and safety rules to protect against shoddy and dangerous goods, is the perfect destination.The result of China's demand for raw materials and its sales of products to Africa is that turnover in trade between Africa and China has risen from £5million annually a decade ago to £6billion today.However, there is a lethal price to pay. There is a sinister aspect to this invasion. Chinese-made war planes roar through the African sky, bombing opponents. Chinese-made assault rifles and grenades are being used to fuel countless murderous civil wars, often over the materials the Chinese are desperate to buy.Take, for example, Zimbabwe. Recently, a giant container ship from China was due to deliver its cargo of three million rounds of AK-47 ammunition, 3,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 1,500 mortars to President Robert Mugabe's regime.After an international outcry, the vessel, the An Yue Jiang, was forced to return to China, despite Beijing's insistence that the arms consignment was a 'normal commercial deal'.Indeed, the 77-ton arms shipment would have been small beer - a fraction of China's help to Mugabe. He already has high-tech, Chinese-built helicopter gunships and fighter jets to use against his people.Ever since the U.S. and Britain imposed sanctions in 2003, Mugabe has courted the Chinese, offering mining concessions for arms and currency.While flying regularly to Beijing as a high-ranking guest, the 84-year-old dictator rants at 'small dots' such as Britain and America.He can afford to. Mugabe is orchestrating his campaign of terror from a 25-bedroom, pagoda-style mansion built by the Chinese. Much of his estimated £1billion fortune is believed to have been siphoned off from Chinese 'loans'.The imposing grey building of ZANU-PF, his ruling party, was paid for and built by the Chinese. Mugabe received £200 million last year alone from China, enabling him to buy loyalty from the army.In another disturbing illustration of the warm relations between China and the ageing dictator, a platoon of the China People's Liberation Army has been out on the streets of Mutare, a city near the border with Mozambique, which voted against the president in the recent, disputed election.Almost 30 years ago, Britain pulled out of Zimbabwe - as it had done already out of the rest of Africa, in the wake of Harold Macmillan's 'wind of change' speech. Today, Mugabe says: 'We have turned East, where the sun rises, and given our backs to the West, where the sun sets.'Despite Britain's commendable colonial legacy of a network of roads, railways and schools, the British are now being shunned.According to one veteran diplomat: 'China is easier to do business with because it doesn't care about human rights in Africa - just as it doesn't care about them in its own country. All the Chinese care about is money.'Nowhere is that more true than Sudan. Branded 'Africa's Killing Fields', the massive oil-rich East African state is in the throes of the genocide and slaughter of hundreds of thousands of black, non-Arab peasants in southern Sudan.In effect, through its supplies of arms and support, China has been accused of underwriting a humanitarian scandal. The atrocities in Sudan have been described by the U.S. as 'the worst human rights crisis in the world today'.The government in Khartoum has helped the feared Janjaweed militia to rape, murder and burn to death more than 350,000 people.The Chinese - who now buy half of all Sudan's oil - have happily provided armoured vehicles, aircraft and millions of bullets and grenades in return for lucrative deals. Indeed, an estimated £1billion of Chinese cash has been spent on weapons.According to Human Rights Watch, a U.S. watchdog, Chinese-made AK-47 assault rifles, grenade launchers and ammunition for rifles and heavy machine guns are continuing to flow into Darfur, which is dotted with giant refugee camps, each containing hundreds of thousands of people.Between 2003 and 2006, China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms, flouting a United Nations weapons embargo.With new warnings that the cycle of killing is intensifying, an estimated two thirds of the non-Arab population has lost at least one member of their families in Darfur.Although two million people have been uprooted from their homes in the conflict, China has repeatedly thwarted United Nations denunciations of the Sudanese regime.While the Sudanese slaughter has attracted worldwide condemnation, prompting Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic director of the Beijing Olympics, few parts of Africa are now untouched by China.In Congo, more than £2billion has been 'loaned' to the government. In Angola, £3 billion has been paid in exchange for oil. In Nigeria, more than £5billion has been handed over.In Equatorial Guinea, where the president publicly hung his predecessor from a cage suspended in a theatre before having him shot, Chinese firms are helping the dictator build an entirely new capital, full of gleaming skyscrapers and, of course, Chinese restaurants.After battling for years against the white colonial powers of Britain, France, Belgium and Germany, post-independence African leaders are happy to do business with China for a straightforward reason: cash.With western loans linked to an insistence on democratic reforms and the need for 'transparency' in using the money (diplomatic language for rules to ensure dictators do not pocket millions), the Chinese have proved much more relaxed about what their billions are used for.Certainly, little of it reaches the continent's impoverished 800 million people. Much of it goes straight into the pockets of dictators. In Africa, corruption is a multi-billion pound industry and many experts believe that China is fuelling the cancer.The Chinese are contemptuous of such criticism. To them, Africa is about pragmatism, not human rights. 'Business is business,' says Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhou Wenzhong, adding that Beijing should not interfere in 'internal' affairs. 'We try to separate politics from business.'While the bounty has, not surprisingly, been welcomed by African dictators, the people of Africa are less impressed. At a market in Zimbabwe recently, where Chinese goods were on sale at nearly every stall, one woman told me she would not waste her money on 'Zing-Zong' products.'They go Zing when they work, and then they quickly go Zong and break,' she said. 'They are a waste of money. But there's nothing else. China is the only country that will do business with us.'There have also been riots in Zambia, Angola and Congo over the flood of Chinese immigrant workers. The Chinese do not use African labour where possible, saying black Africans are lazy and unskilled.In Angola, the government has agreed that 70 per cent of tendered public works must go to Chinese firms, most of which do not employ Angolans.As well as enticing hundreds of thousands to settle in Africa, they have even shipped Chinese prisoners to produce the goods cheaply.In Kenya, for example, only ten textile factories are still producing, compared with 200 factories five years ago, as China undercuts locals in the production of 'African' souvenirs.Where will it all end? As far as Beijing is concerned, it will stop only when Africa no longer has any minerals or oil to be extracted from the continent.A century after Sir Francis Galton outlined his vision for Africa, the Chinese are here to stay. More will come.The people of this bewitching, beautiful continent, where humankind first emerged from the Great Rift Valley, desperately need progress. The Chinese are not here for that.They are here for plunder. After centuries of pain and war, Africa deserves better.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Africa: The Chinese Connection
Zimbabwe Conflict Diamond Informant Incarcerated
Kimberley Process Certification Scheme : The Farce Continues :
" The KPCS falls under the management of the DMCC " : Chaim Even-Zohar
Strongmen of Africa : African Political Role Models Part 2
The Failing Battle Against Blood Diamonds
Historical Perspective :Ed Zwick Producer of Blood Diamonds
Kimberley Process Threatened by Russia. Is it failing ?
RUSSIAN BEAR IN THE JUNGLE
Russian Expansion in Africa Continues
Africa: The Bear And the Dragon
Russian Beneficiation
The Morality of Diamonds : St. Petersburg: A Revolution in The Making
The Three Industry Wild Cards
“The fact is that every single member of the diamond industry, consciously or not, benefited from the very stones that ruined Sierra Leone. That is the simple fact.” Mr. Edward Zwick, whose movie " Blood Diamond " sparked a multimillion-dollar counter-P.R. campaign from the diamond industry.
There is strong anecdotal evidence that al Qaeda bought gems in the Congo-Kinshasa and Angola as well as Sierra Leone and Liberia.
The Congo, with its host of different armies dividing up the country for the purpose of looting, coupled with a long history of a rapacious state and corruption, is long known to be a major financial center for Hezbollah and other armed groups.
Groups Put Kimberley Process on Notice - Plug the Leaks Now
Kimberley Process Failing Part 3
Kimberley Process Fails Part 2
Diamond Dealers : Pariahs of the Future ?
Kimberley Process Under Threat Politically Incorrect Part 1
Kimberley Process Threatened by Russia. Is it failing ?
" Consumers will increasingly measure the product against where it comes from, who manufactured it, and how. What does the product do for the economies where it is mined? This goes far beyond ethical practices – we are getting into areas of business morality, or, more precisely, the morality of our business " : THURSDAY, JULY 3RD, 2008, CHAIM EVEN-ZOHAR
Kimberley Process Certification Scheme From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Profiting from Zimbabwe's 'blood diamonds'
*WFDB warns about use of conflict diamonds
*Zimbabwe prisoners in 'hell on earth' die from disease and hunger
*Zimbabwe: Global Diamond Body Orders Ban On Chiadzwa Diamonds
*Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamonds Part 4
*Robert Mugabe's pilot tried to stay in UK illegally because he feared president
*Roy Bennett 'shared Zimbabwe cell with 5 dead bodies'
*Mugabe attends funeral for Tsvangirai's wife
*Tsvangirai rules out foul play crash which killed wife
*New threats against white Zimbabwe farmers
*Lavish Mugabe birthday party as Zimbabwe suffers
*Iran Nuclear Watch: Robert Mugabe - Iran, Zimbabwe “THINK ALIKE”
*Blood Diamonds Flow From Zimbabwe
*ZIMBABWE: Soldiers are the new illegal diamond miners
*ZIMBABWE: Call to suspend diamonds from the Kimberley Process
*December 13, 2008 Victims of Zimbabwean diamond crackdown to be dumped in mass grave
*Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamond Fever BEATING THE RECESSION IN FIVE EASY STEPS
*Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamond Fever Part 1
*Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamond Fever Part 2
*Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamond Fever Part 3
*Sexy Diamonds in Zimbabwe
*Zimbabwe: Robert Mugabe 'buys £4m apartment in Hong Kong' Grace Mugabe is also mulling over a multi-million pound diamond venture on the Chinese mainland, sending diamonds to be cut in QingdaoDec 21, 2008 - One lone woman feeds 1,000 Zimbabwean refugees a day
Jan 11, 2009 - Zimbabwe a 'slow genocide', warns Methodist bishop
Jan 7, 2009 - Zimbabwe whites survive current famine with kitchen-gardens
Jan 10, 2009 - Two loaves of bread cost $50 billion in Zimbabwe
Dec 27, 2008 - Zimbabwean children close to starvation
Jan 10, 2009 - Mugabe vacations at lavish Malaysian beach resort
Jan 10, 2009 - Wildlife expert: Zimbabwe troops are eating elephants' meat
Jan 11, 2009 - The Plight On One Boy, Prince Jelom
Team Zimbabwe Old foes crack jokes on luxury bonding retreat
Harare diary: Bread winners and losers
Funeral diplomacy? Double tragedy for Tsvangirai
Teacher's relief at working again
Zimbabwe farmer: 'I'm not giving up' Zimbabwe elite seeks to evade sanctions
Blood Diamonds Flow From Zimbabwe
Antwerp's Dirty Dicks & Justice
Sierra Leone diamond miners go for gold
Blunders in Antwerp Diamond File - Report
Zimbabwe's Deadly Diamonds Part 4
Weapons and Guns for Diamonds
Kimberley Process Threatened by Russia. Is it failing ?
Kimberley Process Under Threat Part 2 - Hezbollah in Venezuela
Fake Kimberley Process Certificates
Kimberley Process Under Threat compliments of Rosoboronexport the Russian Defence Export State Corporation
Russian Beneficiation
Africa: The Bear And the Dragon
“MERCHANT OF DEATH” ARRESTED IN THAILAND
The Trial of Charles Taylor
Liberia: 75 Million British Pounds Spent On Taylor's Trial So Far
Insider witness tells of taking arms, diamonds for Charles Taylor
Taylor war crimes trial resumes : The Analyst 7th January 2009
Sierra Leone: Who Owns The Country's Diamonds?
Sierra Leone 'blood diamond' rebels found guilty of war crimes
Sierra Leone Sells First Gems
Diamonds Fund Terrorism in Surat, India
Diamonds-The Universal Gem & Portability of Wealth
Additional Reading on Past Belgian Atrocities & More:
The Crime of the Congo By Arthur Conan Doyle Historical
King Leopold II of Belgium Killer File Historical
Belgium's Imperialist Rape of Africa Historical
ILLICIT DIAMONDS FLOW Current: Antwerp during the Blood Diamond (Conflict Diamond) era and still today is the major world rough diamond recipient headquarter
Congo's Eternal Rape & Pillage
Holocaust in Congo Historical
ILLICIT DIAMONDS FLOW Current: Antwerp during the Blood Diamond (Conflict Diamond) era and still today is the major world rough diamond recipient headquarter
Congo's Eternal Rape & Pillage
Holocaust in Congo
Kimberley Process Still Threatened Part 3
***
Diamond Imports
Fair Trade Diamonds
www.DiamondImports.com.au
~
Subscribe in a reader 
.jpg)
