In the past three years, Zimbabwe’s armed forces, under the control of President Robert Mugabe, have engaged in forced labor of children and adults and have tortured and beaten local villagers in the diamond fields of the Marange district. The military seized control of these diamond fields in eastern Zimbabwe after killing more than 200 people in Chiadzwa, a previously peaceful but impoverished area, in late October 2008. While levels of violence have decreased, the army and other security agents continue to engage in rampant diamond smuggling. Soldiers have forced local villagers to work in syndicates with the army to dig for the diamonds. Marange has become a zone of lawlessness and impunity, a microcosm of the chaos and desperation that currently pervade Zimbabwe.
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On June 23, 2011, Mathieu Yamba, the Chair of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, an international body that oversees the diamond trade, unilaterally made a decision to lift the Kimberley Process’s ban on exports of diamonds from the Marange fields despite finding serious human rights abuses and rampant smuggling during its own investigation there. The decision allows the export of Marange diamonds without any monitoring for human rights abuses or evidence that Zimbabwe is complying with the KP standards. The chairman’s weak excuse was a technicality in the Kimberley Process’s mandate that defines blood diamonds as those mined by abusive rebel groups, not by abusive governments.
Human Rights Watch continues to call for the withdrawal of the army from the diamond fields, an end to ongoing abuses, and investigations into human rights abuses that have taken place since 2007.
Responsible consumers should not buy diamonds from Zimbabwe’s Marange fields, and governments and companies should not allow the import of the diamonds.
