Zimbabwe: We call for cancelling the ban on diamonds

By on July 9, 2010
“The Kimberley Process (KP) should allow us to sell our diamonds, and then must come to Zimbabwe to help us solve problems,” said Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, Tendai Biti.

“It would be very damaging if the K.P does not authorize us to sell our diamonds because it would punish the people of Zimbabwe. We cannot pay for our electricity, we cannot pay our staff and yet we sit on the one of the finest alluvial diamond deposits in the history of mankind”, he said.
The minister’s statement came after a meeting of the Kimberley Process, which ended in a stalemate on Zimbabwe.
The discussions should resume next week in St. Petersburg. Currently Zimbabwe has 4.5 million carats of diamonds in stock. But the Kimberley Process had blocked international sales of these diamonds after having the evidence of serious abuses by the military against civilians in the mines of the eastern Marange.
Although the report of a controller process has given the go ahead for the resumption of sales on the grounds of progress made by Zimbabwe to meet the criteria, but advocacy groups for human rights said that the abuse continued. The leader of one of these groups, Farai Maguwu, was even arrested in Marange.

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