Blood diamonds eye witness account of forced labour

The ZBDC official who entered the fields said he was shocked to see a vast stretch of land where hundreds of soldiers were panning for gold. His shock turned to horror when he saw that hundreds of panners were working at gunpoint.

The fields appeared divided into syndicates of 10 to 20 panners and one or two soldiers, with panners aged from 14 to 70, says a statement released this week by the Zimbabwe Exiles Forum a member of the campaign.

The soldiers favour teenagers because they are energetic and easy to exploit. If the syndicate fails to sell their stones, soldiers keep them and the rest of the syndicate loses out. Some soldiers who were off-duty were also panning. It seems every soldier in Chiadzwa is involved in diamond panning and trade in one way or the other, reported the official.

He said he observed a Mr Mudiwa, identified as brother to Shua Mudiwa, as one of the leading diamond traders in the area, and noted a Mazda B18 truck leaving the diamond fields full of soil suspected to contain diamonds.

Chief Newman Chiadzwa is also widely reported to be one of those people who used his tipper lorry to carry diamond-rich soil out of the fields daily.

The report also said it was clear that there was serious looting of diamonds in the area where the government is conducting mining through ZMDC.

The ZBDC official met with workers who are employed by ZMDC at the plant. At the end of each working day ZMDC workers are dropped off by the company vehicle at Mutsago Business Centre where buyers come to buy diamonds smuggled out of the plant. A businesswoman at Mutsago said business had improved in recent months because of ever-growing numbers of buyers who flock the area to buy diamonds. The CRD official saw a huge fleet of buyers vehicles at Mutsago who were waiting for ZMDC workers to arrive.

It is also widely reported that senior government officials are looting diamonds from the plant. The ZBDC is yet to establish who is involved and how they are looting the diamonds.

The continued looting of Chiadzwa diamonds and the apparent lack of transparency in the mining process is a summary measure of the degree to which Zimbabwes resources are being looted by a handful of corrupt officials and illegal panners whilst the rest of the nation starves, says the ZEF statement.

There is reason to believe this is legalized looting since the government is very aware of panning activities by the army in Chiadzwa. In an effort to present a semblance of law and order, the military dispatches a rapid reaction unit into the diamond fields at least twice per day. The RRU first fires several shots into the air to warn the soldiers before its entry into the diamond fields. By the time the RRU arrives into the diamond fields the soldiers and their syndicates would have fled the scene, only to return a few minutes after the RRU has withdrawn.