Zimbabwe has promised to withdraw its soldiers from diamond fields in the east, an official newspaper reported — a week after a rights group alleged the military was committing killings and abuses in the area.
The move appeared to be an attempt to diffuse criticism over the military’s takeover of the Marange diamond fields and ensure that Zimbabwe’s precious stones won’t be tainted with the “blood diamond” label by activists, which would reduce their value.
The Ministry of Mines denied last month’s report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) that said troops had killed more than 200 people at the Marange diamond fields while forcing children to search for diamonds and beating villagers who got in the way.
Instead, Zimbabwe’s coalition government said the military was there to secure the area, about 250km east of Harare, where mining is managed by the state’s Mining Development Corp.
The 60,000-hectare Marange diamond fields were discovered in 2006 — at the height of Zimbabwe’s political, economic and humanitarian crisis. Villagers rushed to the area and began finding diamonds close to the surface.
The army took over the Marange diamond fields in last October. Before that, the police were in control and HRW said there were less abuses then.
Officials of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme — the world’s diamond control body — recently visited the fields following allegations that security chiefs and loyalists of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe were either perpetrating or tolerating rights abuses and illegal diamond exports.
“There cannot be effective security where diamonds are concerned with the involvement of the military,” the Kimberley delegation said in a report to the Zimbabwean government, quoted by the state-run Sunday Mail.
The Kimberley report also noted illegal digging and processing of diamonds in Marange and called for stricter controls to stop diamond smuggling across the porous eastern border with Mozambique.
Mines Minister Obert Mpofu on Saturday told Kimberley inspectors that the troops would be withdrawn from the diamond fields and the country would meet international mining standards, the Sunday Mail reported.
“We are going to work toward getting in line with the standards proposed,” the paper quoted Mpofu as saying during the meeting.
Mpofu reportedly also told the Kimberley delegation that the coalition government, formed between Mugabe and Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai in February, planned to relocate villagers away from the diamond fields and find investors to help provide security.
Deputy Mines Minister Murisi Zwizwai — a member of Tsvangirai’s former opposition party — said the government had “agreed to remove the soldiers, but it will be done in phases while proper security settings would be put in place,” the Sunday Mail reported.
It is estimated the diamonds could be worth US$200 million a month to the cash-strapped nation, which is desperately trying to raise international aid to kickstart the economy. But the unity government has also been under foreign pressure to show signs of reform.
Withdrawing troops from the diamond fields would deflect further negative publicity, show the government’s commitment to meeting international obligations and ensure greater revenue from the diamonds that are sold.
On June 26, the New York-based HRW cited accounts from more than 100 witnesses, miners, police officers, soldiers and children alleging human rights abuses by troops. It said its researchers had gathered evidence of mass graves and accounts of an incident last year when military helicopters fired on miners, while armed soldiers on the ground chased villagers away.
It said many victims were unwilling to come forward out of fear of the military.
HRW also alleged that some of the income from the diamond fields went to officials of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party.
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS