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INDUSTRY NEWS: BBC NEWS BROADCAST PROMPTS ZIMBABWE DIAMOND RE-EVALUATION August 31, 2011 (0 comments)

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Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo—A new report aired by the BBC News’s Panorama program, detailing human rights abuses in the diamond fields of Zimbabwe, apparently has taken the Kimberley Process organization by surprise.

According to this report on Idex Online, the BBC news program featured testimonies of workers who told of severe beatings and sexual assault at a torture camp known as “Diamond Base.” Additionally, the Panorama report said soldiers and military police broke their silence to describe a 2008 operation in which civilians working in Marange were massacred.

Another reportreleased August 30 by Human Rights Watchsays Zimbabwe police and private security guards employed by mining companies in the Marange diamond fields are charged with shooting, beating, and unleashing attack dogs on impoverished unlicensed miners.

Idexsays the reports caught the diamond industry by surprise after a KP fact-finding mission last year said it did not find any evidence of human rights abuses, and gave ground to calls to broker a deal with Zimbabwe to allow exports of rough diamonds from Marange.

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