Zimbabwe has pledged to remove its troops from diamond fields in the east, an official newspaper said on Sunday — a week after a rights group alleged the military was committing killings and abuses in the area.
The Ministry of Mines has denied last month’s report by Human Rights Watch 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.
The coalition government said the military was there to secure the area, about 250km east of Harare, while the mining is managed by the state’s Mining Development Corporation.
But Mines Minister Obert Mpofu on Saturday told inspectors from the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme — the world’s diamond control body — that the troops would be withdrawn from the diamond fields and the country would meet international mining standards, according to the Sunday Mail.
”We are going to work toward getting in line with the standards proposed,” the paper quoted Mpofu as saying during a meeting with the Kimberly delegation.
Deputy Mines Minister Murisi Zwizwai — a member of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s former opposition party — said the coalition government had ”agreed to remove the soldiers, but it will be done in phases while proper security settings would be put in place,” Zwizwai was quoted as saying.
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.
Officials of the Kimberley Process recently visited the fields following allegations that security chiefs and loyalists of 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 Kimberly delegation said in a report to the Zimbabwean government quoted by the Sunday Mail.
The 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 neighbouring Mozambique.
Mpofu reportedly told the Kimberly delegation that the coalition government, formed between Mugabe and Tsvangirai in February, planned to relocate villagers away from the diamond fields and find investors to help provide security.
On June 26, the New York-based Human Rights Watch 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 from the area.
It said many victims were unwilling to come forward out of fear of the military.
Human Rights Watch also alleged that some of the income from the diamond fields went to officials of Zanu-PF, long accused of trampling on human rights and democracy in the Southern African country. – Sapa-AP