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Zimbabwe’s Soldiers Looting Diamonds
By B. Earth | January 30, 2009
Following the Zimbabwean government’s recent violent removal of illegal miners in the country’s diamond fields, the soldiers sent to carry out the horrific purge have now themselves moved in to the diamond fields to continue the looting. The soldiers are even employing the same impoverished local villagers whom they drove away to work as veritable slave laborers in the fields. But the soldiers themselves benefit minimally from the practice, since much of what is mined is passed on to their superiors, then likely on to the corrupted government.
Diamonds from Chiadzwa, one of the government-seized diamond fields, located about 90 km from the city of Mutare, have been found on the market in India, Lebanon, Russia and South Africa. While the Kimberley Process of international diamond certification is already reviewing Zimbabwe’s record and considered likely to terminate the country’s membership, these new reports about looting by soldiers make the possibility of termination even more likely.
Brilliant Earth joins numerous NGOs and international relief organizations in condemning Robert Mugabe’s government and this new development in Zimbabwe’s ongoing human right crisis. We continue to carry only ethically sourced diamonds that are mined under strict social and environmental standards.
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April 5th, 2010 at 5:31 pm
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