De Beers calls on illegal miners

JOHANNESBURG – The chairman of diamond giant De Beers called on the sector, jittery about its reputation following the Hollywood film ‘Blood Diamond’, to help bring exploited illegal miners into the formal industry.

“If we are not working proactively together to address problems that both affect our business and create real human suffering, we will – in that court of public opinion – be considered complicit and guilty by association,” Nicky Oppenheimer said in a speech yesterday. He urged the World Jewellery Confederation congress in Cape Town to pay more attention to the informal mining sector.”Quite literally, millions of people…are engaged in small-scale digging, often in unacceptable circumstances of poverty, at risk to their lives and subject to human rights abuses.”It is virtually impossible to stop illegal small-scale mining since people need the money to survive, he said.”No, we need to devise ways to embrace these activities into the legitimate, official, formal industry so that the interests of both the individual workers and those of governments are protected.”He asked for support for the Diamond Development Initiative, a grouping of the industry, non-governmental organisations and donors, which is seeking to address the problem.He also warned those attending the jewellery congress that the sector could not tolerate questionable activities, especially after bad publicity from the film ‘Blood Diamond’.Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for an Oscar for the film, in which he plays an ex-mercenary involved in gem smuggling in Sierra Leone, where proceeds from diamonds financed a bloody civil war marked by human rights abuses in the 1990s.Although the Kimberley Process, under which governments certify exports of legitimate diamonds, has helped curtail the extent of so-called “conflict diamonds”, the sector is still nervous about attacks on its integrity.De Beers is 45 per cent owned by mining group Anglo American Plc , 40 per cent by the Oppenheimer family and 15 per cent by the Botswana government.Nampa-ReutersHe urged the World Jewellery Confederation congress in Cape Town to pay more attention to the informal mining sector.”Quite literally, millions of people…are engaged in small-scale digging, often in unacceptable circumstances of poverty, at risk to their lives and subject to human rights abuses.”It is virtually impossible to stop illegal small-scale mining since people need the money to survive, he said.”No, we need to devise ways to embrace these activities into the legitimate, official, formal industry so that the interests of both the individual workers and those of governments are protected.”He asked for support for the Diamond Development Initiative, a grouping of the industry, non-governmental organisations and donors, which is seeking to address the problem.He also warned those attending the jewellery congress that the sector could not tolerate questionable activities, especially after bad publicity from the film ‘Blood Diamond’.Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for an Oscar for the film, in which he plays an ex-mercenary involved in gem smuggling in Sierra Leone, where proceeds from diamonds financed a bloody civil war marked by human rights abuses in the 1990s.Although the Kimberley Process, under which governments certify exports of legitimate diamonds, has helped curtail the extent of so-called “conflict diamonds”, the sector is still nervous about attacks on its integrity.De Beers is 45 per cent owned by mining group Anglo American Plc , 40 per cent by the Oppenheimer family and 15 per cent by the Botswana government.Nampa-Reuters