JOHANNESBURG (Commodity Online): Zimbabwe’s bad reputation as a blood diamond source has sullied the entire Africa’s image with global media reporting that the entire African region is under scanner by the Kimberley Process.
Last week several news agencies and dailies had reported that Zimbabwe is facing a ban from Kimberley Process for its military’s role in smuggling in blood diamonds to the global market.
This week, New York Times, leading daily in the US, reported that human rights advocates worry that nations in the region, particularly South Africa, the regional powerhouse, may balk at taking action against Zimbabwe.
NYT reported that a confidential 44-page report by the Kimberley investigators, completed in September by a participant who is critical of Zimbabwe, accuses Zimbabwe’s army of operating illegal syndicates that smuggle diamonds from the Marange diamond field in eastern Zimbabwe into Mozambique.
Zimbabwe is not accused of producing conflict diamonds, defined as those produced and traded by armed rebel groups. But the smuggling operation opens an illicit channel in the diamond trade that makes possible the introduction of conflict diamonds, the report said.
A decision to suspend Zimbabwe would curtail the sale of its diamonds on the international market, squeezing one of the country’s remaining sources of income.
Kimberley investigators got remarkable access to the troubled Marange diamond fields this year. The report says they witnessed soldiers, who were ostensibly there to protect the diamond fields from illegal mining, supervising and directing illegal mining operations.
Kimberley team, which included representatives from the governments of Liberia, Namibia, South Africa, the United States, Canada and European countries, also collected what it called credible accounts of the army and the police using extreme force, including two helicopters, attack dogs and AK-47s, against illegal miners. Some victims told the investigators that military officers had repeatedly raped them.
The NYT report said in one case, the team’s truck approached seven illegal miners carrying sacks of diamond gravel who tried to run away but agreed to talk after being promised anonymity. The miners told the team that they worked for military officers who let them take 10 per cent of the diamond proceeds.
The team concluded that the government knew about the syndicates and permitted them to operate. It said the government did not appear to have fulfilled promises to demilitarize the diamond fields, and might have actually increased the military’s presence there. It described the information Zimbabwe provided as false, and likely intentionally so.
Though Zimbabwe produces less than 1 per cent of the $8.5 billion worth of diamonds that come from Africa annually, the diamond industry worries that a failure to stop the Zimbabwean Army from running illegal smuggling syndicates, as alleged by the Kimberley team, could again besmirch the reputation of diamonds abroad.
