NGOs Call to Suspend Zimbabwe from KP

Civil society members of the Kimberley Process are calling for Zimbabwe’s suspension from the rough diamond certification scheme, in light of reports of government violence against informal diamond diggers in the country.

Police and army forces reportedly shot and killed as many as 50 diamond diggers at the Chiadzwa diamond fields last month. An attack allegedly called “Operation No Return.”

Members of the KP Civil Society Coalition, including Partnership Africa Canada and Global Witness, said that as the economic and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe “spirals further into misery and ruin,” revenues from diamonds are supporting President Robert Mugabe's “repressive and increasingly violent regime.”

“The KP was designed to halt and prevent conflict diamonds,” said Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada. “The perpetration of human rights abuses and indiscriminate extra-judicial killing by governments in pursuit of Kimberley Process objectives is little better than the problem the scheme seeks to end.” According to Smillie, KP should act to condemn and prevent such violence.

“The Kimberley Process must take a stand against the harnessing of diamonds for systematic abuses by a pariah regime,” Annie Dunnebacke of Global Witness added. “We can no longer assume that Zimbabwe has the ability or the ethical standards needed to control its diamonds in ways that conform to the principles espoused by the Kimberley Process.”

Wide spread rough diamond smuggling have been reported in the past year. In recent months, smugglers have been arrested in India and in Dubai with diamonds, reportedly of Zimbabwean origin.

Following these reports, the NGOs are calling for a number of steps to be taken immediately: a suspension from the KP certification scheme, a statement issued by the KP for all KP Participants to observe basic human rights and a demand that all participants must step up their efforts in the search for illicit Zimbabwe diamonds.