A young person found murdered in the month of June of 2010 no identity in
the body was found
An epidemic of measles and cholera which is spreading in the regions
of Cuango and Cafunfo
claimed the lives of 14 Children so far.
The local Traditional Village Elders and
the civilian population have denounced the epidemic case of measles and
cholera to the Commission of the Legal and Sociological Manifesto of the
Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate, hoping that this epidemic is tackles by the
MPLA Regime.
Since November 2010 the epidemic of measles
and cholera have claimed the lives of 14 children who are now dead in consequence.
There are no hospitals and medical centres
in the region without basic conditions to operate or to function in such
a capacity, there are no doctors in the region either which is claiming
and accelerating the number of deaths of youngsters in the region, an ethnic
cleanse tactic perhaps in the part of the MPLA Regime.
The population of the Lunda Tchokwe are well
aware of the state of total abandonment that this diamond rich area is in
a state of total lack of concern by the unelected MPLA Regime.
Denial of work in
the entire extension of the Lunda region to the Lunda Tchokwe Native Population.
The Lunda region from Kuando Kubango, up
to the north of the Lunda called Lunda-North, 95% of the active population
with ages between 18 to 40 years old are unemployed, the MPLA unelected
Regime has provided nor allowed any employment activities to arise. This
young population has no way to gain a living even to a basic sustain.
The only way they find is the mining of diamonds.
The MPLA Regime is establishing (so they claim 80 factories in the region
of Viana) but in the Lundas there are no factories, for example. How are
we the People from the Lunda Tchokwe able to make a living? The MPLA is
a Communist Regime and nothing can be done privately or governmentally without
the consent of the unelected MPLA Regime.
So why is the Armed Forces of the MPLA Regime
killing the Diamond Prospectors of the Lunda Tchokwe? If there is no alternative
for them to gain a livelihood. The diamond mines are owned by the Daughter
of the MPLA Dictator Jose Eduardo dos Santos and the MPLA Generals are partners
in De Beers board or directors and they also are partners in all and every
diamond mining company operating in the Lunda region.
They cut and polish the Lunda Diamonds in
Talatona, Luanda. And in the Lunda they avoid employing the Natives.
Also the environment who is looking in the
consequence of what is happening to the region natural environment and the
impact of such digging in the local ecosystem?
In 2010 the diamond mining company ITM expelled
and removed 667 farmers from their agriculture land in Calonda 20 km south
of the Municipality of Lukapa, this forced removal of the native population
happened during the recent months of September, October and November 2010
The same diamond mining company ITM promised
to each farmer a compensation of $50 USD per harvest. A total abuse and
disrespect for a yearly harvest of $50 USD.
From the diamond mining company ITM web site
we read:
“RST was the mining company of ITM International
SA, responsible for most of Angola's diamond production between 1986 and
1992. The annual levels of production during this period, made Angola the
world's 3rd largest producer of diamonds by value. The RST mining operations
were centred around the Cuango river. “
Uprising in Angola targets Leviev diamond mining company
by Adalah-NY
Oct 16th, 2008
Though unreported in english media,
portuguese-language reports from Angola document that a rebellion last week
against diamond mining companies in the Cuango municipality in northeast
Angola was repressed brutally by mining companies’ private security
forces, police and military, resulting in at least one death and over 100
arrests. An Angolan human rights activist informed Adalah-NY that Luminas, a
company owned partly by Lev Leviev and based near the town of Luremo in
Cuango municipality, was one of mining companies targeted in the rebellion,
though Luminas is not specifically named in the translated report below.
New York Magazine reported in 2007 that a
security company contracted by Leviev “was accused… by a local
human-rights monitor of participating in practices of ‘humiliation,
whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.’
Leviev’s formal response to the report did not directly address the abuses
but touted his charitable activities in Angola.” (http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/31549/)
Adalah-NY has been advocating a boycott of Leviev’s companies due to their
construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in violation of
international law, their human rights abuses in Angola and Namibia, and
their destructive development practices in New York City.
A translation by Adalah-NY of a report from
Angola on the rebellion is immediately below, followed by an additional
report on the uprising, information on Leviev, Luminas and Cuango
Municipality and links to other reports with background on human rights
abuses in Angola’s diamond mining sector.
AngoNoticias - News of Angola in real time
Clash in Cuango Leaves One Dead - National
Police Radio Ecclesia October 10, 2008 http://www.angonoticias.com/full_headlines_.php?id=21287
(Translation by Adalah-NY)
One dead and 120 detained, that is the
National Police's tally, after attempts to contain a recent miners' uprising
in the diamond-rich areas of Cuango in North Lunda province.
The incident occurred in the municipality
of Cuango, in the northeast of North Lunda, according to the local police
commander, Sub-Commisioner Estevao Delo, speaking to Radio Ecclesia.
According to him, everything began on
October 3 after the expulsion of garimpeiros [unlicensed diamond miners] in
the Luzamba area.
During the revolt, some members of the
rebellion clashed with units from the ALFA-5 security company as well as
with units from the police and military that had moved in to restore order.
The miners had also erected barricades,
according to the Sub-Commissioner, who also pointed out the material damages
of the uprising, including damaged military vehicles.
The officer also affirmed reports that the
miners wore clothing associated with certain political parties. The officer
did not go into detail at the time.
The confrontation resulted overall in one
death and 120 arrests. The detained will be transferred from Kuango to Dundo
for their court hearing.
Official Sources
The official sources in the area have
argued that more people died than the number given by the police.
The president of the Social Renewal Party (PRS),
Eduardo Kuangana, spoke of five deaths and more than 400 people detained. He
denied that his party, which is influential in the region, had anything to
do with the revolt. Kuangana attributed the origins of the uprising to the
dominance of diamond mining companies in the area, as well as to their
various abuses.
Kuangana demanded the country's president
give attention to the situation to restore order.
According to Sapalo Mutayi,
secretary-general for the Association of Social Development in Cuango (ADSC),
speaking from their radio station, argued that the incident began from
within the Society for Mining Development (SDM), which protects the security
company, ALPHA 5.
ALPHA 5 agents had moved in against
garimpeiros who refused to pay the percentage demanded by a regulator.
From Mutayi's point of view, "the
problem in the diamond areas these days is this. The companies don't engage
in initial exploration [of an area], but follow behind the garimpeiros and
their product."
Untranslated article by Angolan political
party on same events http://fpdangolaimprensa.blogspot.com/2008/10/nota-fpd-preocupada-com-notcias-de.html
Leviev’s ownership of Luminas, from
Operation Kissonde, Rafael Marques, September, 2006 http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Operation-Kissonde-Rafael-Marques-Sep-2006.pdf
Angolan researcher Rafael Marques, reports
that Lev Leviev owns a major stake in Luminas. Marques explains ownership of
Luminas (Sociedade Miniera Luminas) in the following manner in Operation
Kissonde: “According to the contract, signed on 31 October 2002, IDAS, the
project backers, holds a 51% share of the capital, Endiama 38% and Twins
Ltd, 11%... As a matter of fact, the third partner of the project, Nofar
Mining B.V, is a private company created by the Lev Leviev Group and which
holds the capital previously reserved for IDAS Resources, according to
Endiama sources.”
Cuango Development Diagnostic and
Feasibility Assessment, USAID, February 26, 2008 http://www.usaid.gov/ao/cuango_assnt_eng.pdf
Cuango municipality incorporates a
geographic area in excess of 4,000 square kilometers in the province of
Lunda Norte. There are three major towns in the municipality, located along
the Cuango River Valley: Cuango Sede, Cafunfo, and Luremo. The town of
Cuango Sede, the seat of the municipal administration, is estimated to have
a population of approximately 24,000 persons, with Cafunfo estimated at
100,000 and Luremo at 16,800…
Luremo, the seat of Cuango Municipality’s
only Comuna12 government, is located about 30 kilometers north of Cafunfo
(80 kilometers north of Cuango Sede). There is little commercial activity in
Luremo. A relatively new alluvial diamond mining operation, Luminas, is
located a short distance from Luremo…
The two concessions of SDM and ITM (located
immediately to the north of the SDM concession) occupy the Cuango River
Valley between Cuango Sede and Cafunfo. With the third concession of
Luminas, these diamond mining concessions dominate economic activities in
Cuango Municipality. Their concession areas (3000 km2 each) occupy a vast
proportion of the available land within the Cuango Municipality; thus, these
are restricted areas, in keeping with the 1994 Act. This places restrictions
on the movement of people, goods, and economic activity (see Annex 1 chapter
5), and the team saw checkpoints for restricting access to concession areas.
However, public roads exist outside the concession areas and many residents
are engaged in subsistence agriculture, with an unknown percentage of males
engaged in small scale, illicit diamond mining.
Additional reports on human rights
abuses in Angola’s diamond mining sector:
Rinsing the Blood from Angola’s Diamonds,
Rafael Marques, January, 2007
http://198.170.85.29/Marques-lecture-Rinsing-Blood-from-Angola-Diamonds-26-Jan-2007.doc
The New Blood Diamonds, Rafael Marques,
November, 2006 http://www.reports-and-materials.org/Marques-speech-Angola-The-New-Blood-Diamonds-28-Nov-2006.doc
Republic of Angola 2007: Diamond Industry
Annual Review, Partnership Africa Canada http://www.pacweb.org/e/images/stories/documents/angola-ar2007-eng.pdf
Leviev and diamonds in Angola, Adalah-NY
http://adalahny.org/index.php/boycott-against-land-developers-leviev?start=4
"I was beaten until
I fainted. When I return to consciousness it was dark. The next day I
crawled back." Testimonies from the mine in which Leviev is a partner.
11 December 2008
Shooting at residents, murderous beatings
with digging spades, whipping, and being thrown into the mud. Tough
testimonies from Angola describe the treatment of the area's poor by
security personnel at the mine in which Leviev is a partner. Associates deny
this: "those were not our people." Leviev's spokesperson:
"The group created a revolution in the diamond industry in Africa in
general and in Angola in particular. We have widespread social and
philanthropic programs there."
Globes (Israel’s Business Arena)
(Article translated from Hebrew for Adalah-NY by Rann Bar-on)
Itai Rom - Dec 4 2008 http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000403834&fid=2&nagish=1
Deloy Mpemba lives in Luremo, in Northern
Angola. Nearby is mine operated by a company named Luminas - a partnership
between Leviev, the Angola National Diamond Industry and a local retired
general - a large mine. Leviev, according to his associates, owns 40%.
Locals, who search for diamonds to avoid starvation are designated 'pirate
miners'. They are easy prey for Luminas' security company.
On May 17, Mpemba was coming back home with
some friends at the end of a day of searching. At a certain stage the group
encountered a armed group of security guards hired by K&P Mineira, a
private company hired to secure the mine.
"They beat me until my buttocks were
swollen and I passed out," testified Mpemba, who required crutches
after the incident. "When I came back to consciousness it was dark and
I couldn't walk. I stayed in the place I fell until the next day. I crawled
back to the neighborhood."
This testimony was published in a report a
short while after the incident, in mid-2006 by Rafael Marques, an Angolan
human-rights activist, who was been given many international prizes. Next to
it in the report, titled 'Diamonds of Humiliation and Misery', are dozens of
additional testimonies about abuse and human-right violations committed by
the security personnel hired by the mine (as well as by companies serving
other corporations).
The testimonies display a dark picture, far
as can be from the gala dinners of the diamond mine owners: arbitrary
shootings, beatings with rifle butts and digging tools, whippings with
belts, violence to children, humiliation ceremonies that include forcing
miners to strip, and sometimes to sing and dance naked - are a common
occurrence, and that's only a partial list. The companies' activities have,
according to Marques' report, a "deep sadistic streak."
The report raised attention around the
world, but in Israel it was not even published. Even those interested find
it hard to gather data on the events. Angolan journalists have been jailed
after publishing critical reports, and local activists to whom Globes turned
completely refused to talk on the whole, since "it isn't secure."
Marques, who agreed to be interviewed, said that since the publication of
his report "the incidents of arbitrary violence have decreased in
number, but the problems with the illegal miners continue. I have
information about new cases of people who have been killed and of people
abused."
"It's very dirty business in
Angola," he added this week. "There is no such thing as being
clean in the diamond business there, and there is nothing ethical in it.
Only those able to swim in mud succeed in this industry"
This is How it Looks in Angola
Today the diamond mines in Angola are
controlled by foreign corporations- from Russia, Brazil, South Africa and
also from Israel - with the help of the security companies whose tactics
have been described above. "A milestone in negligence and
lawlessness," Marques says in his report. He adds that the diamonds,
that could be a blessing for the area, have turned, from the residents'
point of view, into a "curse that is destroying their lives."
The corporations' activities are in
partnership with the government, and billions of dollars flow into the
latter's purse. Surprisingly, though, the area - that is so rich in
resources - remains poor even by Angolan standards. More than a tenth of the
children die before the age of five due to lack of health services; most of
the villages have no schools; running water is rare resource.
The great poverty is also reflected in some
of the cases of abuse documented by Marques. For example, in the story of
Antonio Eliseu,14. The teenager looked for diamonds in the river with a
friend, until K&P's security men arrived. "The ordered us to come
out of the water, and one of them slapped by face," testified Eliseu.
When his words failed to find favor with the security personnel they
continued to beat him, and when his friend tried to intervene, he was shot
and began to bleed into the river. "The security man," said Eliseu,
"asked me how come a child is already mining diamonds. I told him I
have no way of paying for my education since my father does not work and
there is no work in town."
Even when the miners find diamonds that
will be worth a fortune in the West, it is doubtful whether they get
adequate compensation for them, and this is where Leviev enters the picture.
Since 1999 the Israeli tycoon has been in partnership with the Angolan
government in a company called Ascorp (Angola Selling Corporation): until
2003 the company held the exclusive rights to purchase unprocessed diamonds
from pirate miners, and since then it operates alongside a second company.
According to past publications, Leviev holds 49% of the company. His people
deny this, saying that his ownership stake is smaller, but refuse to say
what it actually is.
Where do the Diamonds Come From? Good
Question
The lack of documentation referred to by
Marques is just one part of the long list of problems in the management of
the buying houses - problems that contradict the Kimberley Treaty that the
diamond bosses, Leviev among them, love to gloat about. "Leviev was
Angola's chief consultant during the Kimberly process," say his
associates, "and Angola is among the leaders in implementing the
process."
Really? While the central part of the
process is the implementation of means of control and monitoring that will
verify where each and every diamond comes from and who profits from its
sale, the purchasing houses in which Ascorp buys it diamonds do not ask the
seller for details, do not inquire as to the origin on the diamonds, and do
not document the transactions. The payment, by the way, takes place in
'black' - without receipts or documentation.
And who in Angola grants the certification
that these are not blood diamonds? Sodiam, the governmental corporation that
is Leviev's partner in Ascorp, that of course has an interest in certifying
as many diamonds as possible for sale.
Some of these unprocessed diamonds have
reached Israel in the past few years. When Leviev received the license for
world-wide distribution of Angolan diamonds, the response in the markets in
Ramat Gan has highly satisfied, since now unprocessed diamonds could come
directly to Israel and skip all the middlemen. In July 2004, 'Sodiam
International' was incorporated - another partnership between Leviev and the
Angolan government. The new company sells Angola's diamonds on the world
market.
The company, whose founding ceremony was
attended by the minister of finance Benjamin Netanyahu, was registered in
Israel. Its offices are on Betzal'el Street in the Ramat Gan diamond market.
The company states that none of its diamonds are blood diamonds, and when
the Ministry of Trade sees the Angolan stamp, it adds its own as well.
But do the representatives of the Ministry
of Trade really know whose pockets were lined with money due to those
diamonds? Not really. The PAC [Partnership Africa Canada] report from about
a year ago states: "The origin of the stones, and the deals and
businessmen through whom they passed before arriving at the purchasing
houses - remain a mystery [...] The system is clearly sufficiently loose to
allow a huge quantity of blood diamonds to get through, if disputes were
occurring in nearby areas [...] If a new conflict breaks out, the Angolan
system will be wide open for exploitation [...] There is nothing in the
system that will prevent widespread laundering of unprocessed diamonds from
war-torn areas of Angola or elsewhere, in case a new war breaks out."
In a report published a month ago the organization states that nothing has
changed.
The warnings are not theoretical: in
adjacent Congo a brutal civil war has been raging for years and has cost the
lives of millions. In January, a peace agreement was signed between the
rebels and the government and a ceasefire was declared. However, the battles
have recently resumed, including massacres and brutal rapes. "If the
situation in Congo worsens and it becomes impossible to export diamonds from
the country," says Blor, "they will easily get to Angola and from
there outwards. The diamond companies are talking about how much they have
done so that the Kimberly process would work, and the governments always say
how proud they are of the process. But when the civil organizations point
out that they really have no idea where the diamonds come from, and that the
system is broken, they just ignore their words completely."
"The Kimberly process in Angola is a
farce," adds Marques, "it does not assist in defining which are
truly clean diamonds and which are dirty. The only people who really profit
from the Kimberly process are Leviev and Morris Templesman [another diamond
man who purchases unprocessed diamonds] who use it for their own purposes
and who get a cover for exploiting workers from the Kimberly process."
Associated of Leviev agree that they in
fact have no idea where the diamonds that Ascorp purchases from the
unlicensed miners come from. "We don't have much to say regarding this
claim," they say, "not everything is rosy."
- They could be diamonds that originate in
the Congo, for example.
"It is true that it is possible that
diamonds are passed on from Congo. What happens in the field today is that
smuggling takes place the other way. Anyway, the buyer knows what is a
diamond from Congo and what is a diamond from Angola."
- And you can promise that the buyer will
not buy a diamond if it appears that it came from Congo?
"Not everything is rosy."
Associates of Leviev Respond: "We
Created a Revolution in Angola"
On the cases of abuse: Initially,
associates of the private Leviev group (that is not associated with
Africa-Israel) claimed that the report did not include any cases attributed
to their security company and said that "we respect the report. We do
not take it lightly. Send us the report and we will check." A few days
after Globes sent the report the same associated stated that "The
incidents were investigated and were found to never have occurred. The
incidents were not committed by the security company. If they did happen,
perhaps they were carried out by Angolan security forces."
On the claims that transactions take place
without documentation and in cash:"The state runs the business. We do
not know who the purchasers are and do not pay those responsible. The state
produces the certificates that enable trade in diamonds. The group does not
intervene in day-to-day management. From checks that we ran, we see that
only those certified carry out transactions, according to the
regulations."
The group's spokesman wished to add that
the group "created a revolution in the African diamond industry in
general and specifically in Angola. While in the past the industry only
exported the diamonds, the group now cooperates with governments by raising
entire industries dedicated to the processing of diamonds, including
training local workers and the creation of thousands of jobs. This
socioeconomic revolution is of great added value."
The associated also said that the group
carries out extensive social and philanthropic activities, however they did
not respond to Globe's request to give exact specification of these
activities: "getting into accounting for a million here or a million
there is not the point," they said.
The 'Blood Diamond'
Resurfaces
By MICHAEL ALLEN
19 JUNE 2010
CAFUNFO, Angola—On paper, Angola is a
poster child for the global effort to keep "blood diamonds" out of
the world's jewelry stores.
International pressure helped end a vicious
civil war a decade ago by strangling the ability of rebels to trade diamonds
for weapons. Angola is now a leading member of the so-called Kimberley
Process, an industry-wide effort to prevent commerce in rough diamonds by
insurgent groups. Today, Angola is the world's fifth-largest diamond
producer by value, and its gems are coveted for their size and purity.
But a visit to Angola's diamond heartland
reveals that plenty of blood still spills over those precious stones. Here
in the sprawling jungle of northeast Angola, a violent economy prevails in
which thousands of peasant miners eke out a living searching for diamonds
with shovels and sieves. Because they lack government permits, miners and
their families say they are routinely beaten and shaken down for bribes by
soldiers and private security guards—and, in extreme cases, killed.
This sort of violence, which has made
headlines in nearby Zimbabwe, is threatening to tear the Kimberley Process
apart. Diamond retailers can ill afford more bad publicity about tainted
stones. But many of Africa's diamond-producing nations are wary about any
effort to beef up the industry's policing of human rights.
Around Angola's mines, tales of
confrontation abound. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Linda
Moisés da Rosa, 55 years old, denounced the killings of her two sons, both
diamond miners. In September, she said, Angolan soldiers descended on a
large mine near here to chase away diggers. When some refused to leave, she
said, the soldiers caved in the mine, burying alive around 45 men, including
her son Pereira Eduardo Antonio, 21. "These kids were stubborn,"
she said, adding that the soldiers said that the killings "should serve
as a lesson to anyone who wants to come dig here again."
In February, she said, her oldest son,
33-year-old Tito Eduardo, the family's sole breadwinner, got into a dispute
with private security guards at another mining site. She said the guards had
agreed to let local diggers sift gravel for diamonds in exchange for around
$30 a day. They accused her son of failing to pay the bribe, and when he
argued back, she said, "they killed him with a machete."
Military officials didn't respond to
requests for comment. Angola's secretary of state for human rights, António
Bento Bembe, blames his nation's long civil war for creating a climate of
abuse. "I know lots of these cases happen, and I know of many other
cases you haven't heard of yet," he said in an interview in Luanda,
Angola's capital. "It is urgent to cultivate a culture of human
rights."
The issue has plunged the Kimberley Process
into the worst crisis in its brief history. Born at a time of great
bloodshed on the African continent, the 75-nation Kimberley Process was
initially lauded for its commitment to human rights. Rebel movements had
seized control of diamond regions in Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic
Republic of Congo and used the gems to finance marauding guerrilla armies.
Facing a public-relations nightmare, world diamond companies agreed to buy
rough stones only if they are certified by internationally recognized
governments. The Kimberley Process says well over 99% of the world's
rough-diamond trade is now "conflict-free."
But critics say there's a big loophole in
that definition: It doesn't take into account human-rights abuses in diamond
territory controlled by governments themselves. "The Kimberley Process
cut the financial lifeline of rebels, but at the same time it gave
legitimacy to corrupt governments that abuse their own people," says
Rafael Marques, a human-rights activist who has worked extensively in
northeastern Angola.
Much of the recent controversy is focused
on Zimbabwe, where the group Human Rights Watch last year reported that
government soldiers massacred over 200 people in a fight to control diamond
fields in the east of the country, raped local women and press-ganged
peasants into mining work. The Kimberley Process temporarily suspended
exports from the area on the grounds that the turmoil was allowing
undocumented stones to be smuggled into the world market. Last month, a
monitor installed by the Kimberley Process recommended that the ban be
lifted, kicking off a fierce debate. A Kimberley Process committee has been
deliberating the recommendation and the issue will be taken up in a meeting
of the entire group in Tel Aviv starting Monday.
Global Witness, a human-rights organization
that helped conceive the Kimberley Process, called for Zimbabwe to be
suspended from the group. "Thanks to the impunity and violence in
Zimbabwe, blood diamonds are back on the international market," said
Elly Harrowell, a Global Witness activist.
Jewelers are starting to worry that the bad
publicity could spook consumers. Matthew Runci, chief executive of Jewelers
of America, a trade group which represents jewelry chains from Tiffany &
Co. to Zale Corp., says the Kimberley Process should either figure out a way
to incorporate human-rights monitoring into its oversight of member
countries or invite an outside organization to do it for them. "It's
essential that the public's confidence in diamonds be maintained at a high
level," he says. Once a diamond has been cut and polished, it's
virtually impossible for the consumer to tell its country of origin.
Cecilia Gardner, a former New York federal
prosecutor who serves as the general counsel of the World Diamond Council,
says the Kimberley Process is a voluntary organization and isn't equipped to
enforce human-rights compliance. "We don't have an army, we don't have
a police force," she says.
In Angola, which far overshadows Zimbabwe
in importance to the jewelry market, the Kimberley Process appears to have
little appetite for human-rights issues. Last August, when a Kimberley
Process peer-review team arrived to check the country's compliance
procedures, Angolan forces were just mopping up a major operation to expel
some 30,000 illegal Congolese miners from Angolan territory near here.
According to a U.S. State Department report citing local media and
nongovernmental organizations, military and police "arbitrarily beat
and raped detainees" and forced them to march to the border without
food or water. The government has denied committing abuses and says the army
was merely securing the nation's borders.
A confidential Kimberley Process report on
the review visit makes no mention of alleged human-rights abuses, although
it criticizes Angola for failing to present a plan to better document the
output of peasant mining. The group spent just two days in Lunda Norte, an
area near the Congo border that has become a flashpoint for clashes between
diggers and security forces. According to a draft of the internal report,
the delegation intended to visit the site of a large illegal mining
operation but was thwarted by "a last-minute decision to participate in
a graduation ceremony for new border patrol security officers." As the
team was preparing to depart, the chairman of the Kimberley Process at the
time, Namibian politician Bernhard Esau, pronounced the visit a success and
brushed off questions about alleged abuses of peasant miners. "The
Kimberley Process is not a human-rights organization," he told
reporters.
The roots of Angola's current blood-diamond
problems have much to do with geology. Unlike in Botswana and South Africa,
where multinational corporations use heavy machinery to extract diamonds out
of deep shafts, much of Angola's diamond reserves are alluvial, meaning the
stones have been washed out of the earth and scattered across the
countryside. They're available to anyone with a shovel and wood-framed
sieve, and are difficult for mining companies to secure. More than a million
people world-wide earn a living from artisanal mining in alluvial fields,
including tens of thousands in Angola alone.
Angola's artisanal miners, known in
Portuguese as garimpeiros, played a pivotal role in the country's civil war,
which lasted for 27 years and left at least a half-million people dead.
U.S.-backed troops of the Union for the Total Independence of Angola, or
UNITA, fighting to depose a Soviet-supported socialist government,
controlled much of the country's diamond territory. To fund their war
effort, they enlisted peasant diggers from here as well as neighboring
Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
While UNITA forces committed plenty of
atrocities, some people here in Cafunfo say they generally treated
garimpeiros fairly. They allowed diggers to keep a percentage of the
diamonds they found and established an immigration policy to bring in
Congolese workers on 30-day permits, says Enoque Jeremias, a local
human-rights investigator. "It was a fair system," he adds.
The war's end led to a surge in diamond
production, as large mining companies dusted off old claims and launched new
operations. Among the players are Odebrecht SA of Brazil, Russia's
state-owned Alrosa; and a company controlled by Israeli diamond magnate Lev
Leviev, all of which operate in joint ventures with the government diamond
company Endiama.
But the garimpeiros were hardly prepared to
put away their shovels. There's little agriculture here and almost no jobs
outside of the mining sector. Plus, vast parts of the countryside haven't
even been explored yet, much less mined. The peasants proved adept at
finding diamond deposits that the big companies missed, and this so-called
informal production continued to account for more than one-quarter of the
country's diamond exports, according to the Partnership Africa Canada, an
Ottawa-based nongovernmental agency that deals with mining issues.
To soak up those diamonds, Angola
authorized foreign-run buying operations to be established in the bush. U.S.
diamond giant Lazare Kaplan International Inc. became a fixture in the area,
signing a technical agreement with the government to set up buying houses.
Lazare Kaplan says it let the agreement expire in 2008, when world diamond
prices collapsed, and is now winding down operations in Angola. Lazare
Kaplan Chairman Maurice Tempelsman, the late-life companion of Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, says the company was trying to bring development to the
area and help strengthen Angola's Kimberley Process controls. "I am
strongly committed to the protection of human rights," Mr. Tempelsman
says, adding: "I believe in this imperfect world, involvement in trying
to bring about constructive change is the best course."
Lazare Kaplan's withdrawal has left a
wide-open field for other buyers, including a company controlled by Israel's
Mr. Leviev, as well as a flood of newcomers from West Africa and the Middle
East. Their storefronts line the muddy streets of Cafunfo, trying to outdo
each other with mirror-signed bling.
For Ahmad Mouein, a Lebanese buyer who
bills himself as "Boss Mouein," it's a great business opportunity
despite the recession in the diamond market. "Sometimes a digger here
can sell you a $500,000 stone for $5,000, $10,000," he marvels. He says
the Kimberley Process hasn't succeeded in its primary mission of halting
smuggling. "Kimberley or not Kimberley, my friend, for the diamond, you
can do what you want."
By many accounts, the presence of these
buying houses has only fanned the violence by encouraging more peasants to
get into the mining business at the same time that government security
forces have been tasked with stopping them.
At one such illegal mine, an hour's
motorcycle ride over trails outside of Cafunfo, a Dantesque scene unfolds.
Perhaps 500 young men are clambering over a vast pit dug deep into the red
earth. They've been at it for a year now, and figure they have months to go
until they hit a vein of gravel they believe will contain diamonds. Their
tools are rudimentary—pikes and shovels—and the work is backbreaking,
alleviated only by the homegrown marijuana many smoke and the small sachets
of alcohol that can be had everywhere for a dollar.
They live on the site in homemade tents and
work in shifts. To support themselves, they say, they make agreements with
buyers, especially the West Africans, to split the take.
Caxaculo Milonga, 44, says he's on the hook
with a man he knows as Boss Ibrahim from Senegal. Although Boss Ibrahim paid
medical expenses when a run-in with police and soldiers sent him to the
hospital, Mr. Milonga complains that the deal is unfair because he has to
give Boss Ibrahim 50% of all production, then sell the rest to him at a
rock-bottom price. "We work like slaves and they're cheating us,"
he says. "You can't argue or he'll call the police." Another
garimpeiro says his sponsor at one time was a police investigator in Cafunfo,
making any negotiation pointless.
Concerns about security forces are never
far away. Last year, as part of the latest effort to expel Congolese
diggers, the Angolan army moved into the area in force. In recent months
patrols have paid a visit to the mine, harassing miners and slapping them
with the flat side of their machetes, the miners say. The diggers worry that
the army is just waiting until they hit gravel so they can move in and take
the diamonds for themselves.
Near another illegal mining site, peasants
described a similar scenario. In December, an army patrol swept through the
village of Bundo in search of mining tools, says Cazanguia Andre, the
60-year-old deputy chief of the village. He says he ran into them on the way
back from tilling his field, and they accused him of being a garimpeiro.
They then hit him twice in the head with a rifle butt and struck him with a
pole, he adds, breaking his arm. Later, after they discovered shovels at the
local church, which Mr. Andre says were being used for construction, they
arrested three people.
A lieutenant at a nearby temporary army
encampment declined to be interviewed but said his squad hasn't committed
any abuses of the local population and isn't involved in any mining
activities.
Back in Bundo, four garimpeiros give a
different story. They say when soldiers swept through they discovered the
garimpeiros working with a water pump in a pit. The soldiers confiscated the
pump. Then a negotiation ensued, says one garimpeiro, and the soldiers
agreed to give back the pump in exchange for $54—as well as a split of the
action. "When we hit the gravel, the soldiers will be present to get
their share," he says.
Write to Michael Allen at [email protected]
Operation Kissonde: the
diamonds of humiliation and misery
Index:
Goals of the Report
Expected Outcomes
1 Executive Summary
2 The Government
3 The National Police
3.1 Improvements
3.2 Comparison
3.3 Conversations, Promises and Reality
3.4 The Bridge of Discord
3.5 The Subsidiaries of the National Police
3.6 Ping-pong
4 The Angolan Armed Forces
5 Sodiam and Ascorp: the head and tail of garimpo
5.1 Sodiam Sarl
5.2 Sodiam International
5.3 Ascorp and the Law of the Powerful
6 The Exploiter
6.1 Endiama
6.2 Sociedade de Desenvolvimento Mineiro
6.3 Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC)
6.4 Sociedade Mineira Luminas
7 The Agents of the New Order: systematic practices of sadism and cruelty
7.1 Alfa–5
7.1.1 Brief Annotation on Alfa–5
7.1.2 Description of Violations in 2006
7.1.3 Description of Violations in 2005
7.1.4 The Response from the General Manager of Alfa-5
7.2 K&P Mineira
7.2.1 Brief Annotation on K&P Mineira
7.2.2 Description of violations in 2006
7.2.3 Description of Violations in 2005
7.2.4 The Response from the General Manager of K&P Mineira
7.3 Teleservice
7.3.1 Brief Annotation of Teleservice
7.3.2 Description of Violations in 2006
7.3.3 The Response from the General Manager of Teleservice
8 Conclusions
8.1 The Strategy and the Resignation of the Government
8.2 Carte Blanche to Demonstrate Power and to Humiliate
9 Annexes
9.1 The Tale of a Brave Woman
9.2 Justice
9.3 Odebrecht and the Angolan Rulers: the samba of promiscuity
Goals of the Report
Defend humans rights in an unequivocal and
uncompromising fashion.
Give the victims a voice.
Break away from the culture of fear and impunity.
Denounce the maintenance of blood diamonds, in Angola, by other methods and
other protagonists, with tragic human and social consequences.
Promote citizenship and a sense of justice
Expected Outcomes
Discussion, in the National Assembly, of
the Diamonds Law, currently used to justify
the
pillaging and violence, so as to transform it into a legal instrument of
protection,
also protection of the
interests of the local population.
Putting an end to practices of sadism, cruelty and humiliation by private
security companies and mining operators against the people of Cuango.
Raising of national and international public opinion awareness on the
neo-colonialist conduct of the diamond industry in Angola.
Adoption, by the government, of specific and public measures, for respect
and protection of human life, in the diamond bearing areas.
Broader public discussions for the diversification of the singular economy
centered on diamonds, so as to promote the creation of employment, for
social and political stability of the area.
Executive Summary
"Angola is a foreign country to us.
We, Angolans, are treated worse than animals"
José Bartolomeu, miner
This report is a follow-up to Lundas: The
Stones of Death[1] (2005). It looks at the tragic impact that diamond
extraction has on the lives of local populations, the institutional
incentives to permanently violate human rights, the privatisation of
violence, and the unchecked plundering of these resources.
Due to financial and logistical
limitations, this work only covers the hydrographic basin of the Cuango, in
other words, Cuango municipality. The first report covered a wider area,
both northeastern provinces of Lunda-Norte and Lunda-Sul, of almost
200,000km2 with over a million inhabitants.
Cuango has a surface area of 6,818.8km2 and
is situated in the south-west of Lunda-Norte province. According to official
estimates, it has a population of 140,000 inhabitants. This region is
notorious for illegal immigration, in the tens of thousands, because of the
garimpo[2] and the resulting commerce.
As a traditional area for diamond
extraction, Cuango is home to three major diamond-mining enterprises: the
Sociedade de Desenvolvimento Mineiro (SDM), which has its headquarters in
the administrative capital of Cuango; the Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC),
at Cafunfo; and the Sociedade Mineira Luminas, in the commune of Luremo.
These three diamond companies use the security firms Alfa-5, Teleservice,
and K&P Mineira, respectively, to guard their operations.
Upon the end of 'Operação Brilhante'[3],
in February 2005, these private security firms assumed complete
responsibility for combating all clandestine prospecting throughout the
Cuango region.
In practical terms, the entire region of
Cuango, with the exception of the administrative zones of the state and a
few highly populated areas, can be considered a restricted[4] and
protected[5] zone, according to Law nº16/94 of 7 October, which established
the 'Special Regime of the Diamond-Mining Reserves Zones'. This 'regime' is
also known as the Diamonds Law.
Moreover, in the restricted and protected
zones, in accordance with article 20 nº1 of the Diamonds Law, "any
type of economic activity [:] is prohibited, whatever its nature, whether
industrial, commercial, agricultural, or other [:]".
In effect, the Government has divided
Cuango into three slices and handed them to the three companies namely SDM,
SMC and Luminas. In this manner, Alfa-5 hired by SDM, controls the Cuango's
administrative town, with the same name; Luminas hands over the control of
Luremo to K&P Mineira; and Teleservice, under SMC contract, oversees the
Cafunfo sector. Thus, the security control exercised by these companies
extends throughout the whole territory. The methods used epitomise the
systematic violation of human rights in the name of the law and the
authority granted by the state.
These violations have a profoundly sadistic
aspect given that, in general, the behaviour of the guards of the three
companies includes beating their victims on the buttocks, undressing them
and making them circulate naked or semi-naked in public, as well as other
rituals of humiliation. They use, as distinct instruments of torture,
shovels, or the handles of shovels, clubs and machetes. In the particular
case of Alfa-5, various cases have been documented in which the victims are
forced to carry out homosexual acts. In one particular case, a son-in-law
was forced to violate his father-in-law.
Forced labour at the installations and the
working areas of the aforementioned diamond extraction companies has become
a routine part of life for the garimpeiros. It is used as a form of
punishment which is administered by these companies.
Similarly, K&P Mineira has a dual role
in providing services to Luminas as well as Sodiam/LKI and Ascorp. On the
one hand, it uses arbitrary methods, including violence, to expel the
garimpeiros from the Luminas concession. On the other hand, it protects and
accompanies Sodiam/LKI and Ascorp in the management and patronage of the
garimpeiros.
Although the Diamonds Law safeguards the
practice of artisanal diamond mining, in other words, legal garimpo (Chapter
III of the Law, nº16/94), for part of the local population, the Government
prefers to keep them in a situation of permanent illegality.
Any agricultural or commercial activity in
the region, like the rest of the Lundas, requires the direct authorisation
of the Provincial Governor. It is well known that among the local
population, there is not a single artisanal exploration licence, or a
licence for the practice of subsistence agriculture. In this way, the
Government stops these people from surviving without resorting to illegal
methods.
The consequences are tragic. For example,
on 20 April 2006, guards from K&P Mineira stopped Franciso Pinto from
fishing in the River Lumonhe, on the basis that the river and the fish in it
are also part of the SMC concession. They beat him until he lost
consciousness. Óscar Neves was hit in the eye with the butt of a rifle and
was whipped by Teleservice for taking care of his personal hygiene by
bathing in the River Cuango. Like all the other villagers, Neves used the
river to wash because of the lack of piped water in the region. However,
according to Teleservice, the river "is part of the concession".
The law on Private Security Firms (Law nº19/92
of 31 July) prohibits, in article 4, paragraph a) private security
activities involving "criminal investigation of any type".The nº2,
article 4 of Law nº19/92, prohibits "activities by private security
firms that come into conflict with the performance of the proper functions
of the security forces and security services and the civil protection of the
State".
These companies do not observe the special
obligations, according to paragraph a) of article 15 of the same law, to
"give immediate knowledge to the judicial authorities or the police of
any public crime of which they have knowledge in the exercise of their
functions or that is clearly being committed".
Moreover, paragraph b) of article 15 of the
above-mentioned law, prohibits "personal performance that could be
mistaken by the public for elements of the armed forces or the security
services and the state's civil protection services".
So, the documented cases show clearly a
total disrespect for the law. These businesses behave, without precedent, in
an arbitrary way in detaining, interrogating and torturing citizens, as well
as patrolling public roads and neighbourhoods with men in uniform who are
armed for combat situations.
Despite their effective public relations
propaganda, the diamond companies do nothing to reduce the misery of the
local populations in the area.
Without work or other alternatives, the
local people become exclusively dependent on garimpo. They are easy prey in
the politics of the fight against garimpo. Such a situation is devastating
the populations slowly, with the silent and silently, in complicity of
international powerhouses and institutions more concerned with lucrative
contracts or in getting cozy with the regime.
The Cuango region has the peculiarity of
being under the effective control, from a military point of view, of the
private security forces. This precedent represents, therefore, another type
of threat to the institution of a true rule of law and a democratic Angola.
Moreover, the subordination of the local
administration, police authorities and the military to the aims of the
businesses which operate in the region, in the face of the negligence of the
concessionary, Endiama, acts as a cover for senior figures of the regime who
are only looking out for their own particular interests.
Thus, the privileged access to riches
remains subject to the duality of violence and corruption. The maintenance
of unchecked power by a few individuals, in the country, strives on such
logic, in detriment of transparency and true democracy. So, it is time for
the government to break from a political strategy dependent on violence and
corruption, even if both are privatized.
[1] Marques, Rafael and Rui Falcão de
Campos (2005), Lundas: The Stones of Death is available online at
www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/ADDMarq.pdf
[2] Garimpo is clandestine diamond
extraction. A garimpeiro is an unauthorised diamond prospector or miner.
[3] Operação Brilhante (Operation
Shining) was a joint operation between the police forces and the military in
order to combat clandestine mining and the illegal entry of foreigners into
Angola. It began towards the end of 2003. This operation covered the
provinces of Lunda-Norte, Lunda-Sul, Malanje and Bié, and, according to
data provided by the Ministry of Interior, resulted in the expulsion of
256,417 foreigners who were in the country illegally.
[4] Article 17, no1 of the Diamonds Law
stipulates that access to restricted zones is prohibited apart from those
people who are legally involved in diamond production. The exception applies
only to government officials and people and employers who are there in an
official capacity. The government does permit concessionaires, in article 18
no1, the freedom to regulate the circulation of people in their concessions.
[5] In the same way, point 1in article 19
of the Diamonds Law prohibits the circulation of goods in the restricted
zones "without the authorisation of the concessionaire", whereas
point 2 of the same article permits such circulation with a written
authorization by the concessionaire. The report Lundas: The Stones of Death
presents a legal analysis of the Diamonds Law and its perverse impact on the
local populations. See www.wilsoncenter.org/events/docs/ADDMarq.pdf
The full text of the Diamonds Law can be
viewed at www.endiama.co.ao/pdfs/Lei16_94.pdf
FFSA
Federation
of the Free States of Africa
Contact
Secretary General
Mangovo Ngoyo
www.africafederation.net
