WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-09-22 Time: 09:00:03 Posted By: News Poster
By Alex Bell
A top secret deal between Robert Mugabe and China’s ‘Red Army’ is reportedly keeping the regime in power, in an ‘arms-for-diamonds’ arrangement that is driving the plunder of the Chiadzwa diamond fields.
The UK’s Daily Mail reported over the weekend how the deal made by Mugabe’s loyal security forces and the equally notorious Chinese People’s Liberation Army, has resulted in millions of dollars worth of industrial diamonds being mined and airlifted to China. The stones, which are not pure enough for commercial sale, are flown directly out of Chiadzwa where an airstrip was built last year. And in return, Zimbabwe’s military is given weapons to keep propping up Mugabe’s regime.
The Mail reports that the company given the rights to the diamond fields, Mbada Mining, is fronted by Mugabe’s trusted former personal helicopter pilot, with Chinese military officials as silent partners. According to documents in the Mail’s possession, the pilot, Robert Mhlanga, was personally appointed by Mugabe, with Chinese partners named as Deng Hongyan, Zhang Shibin, Zhang Hui, Jiang Zhaoyao and Cheng Qins.
“With military camps set up around the perimeter, and three separate fences erected to keep out smugglers and spies, local villagers told me appalling stories of how they have been driven from the land at gunpoint,” writes Andrew Malone, the Mail journalist who went undercover at Chiadzwa for the report.
The deal between Zimbabwe and China was reportedly set up by General Constantine Chiwenga, who is believed to have made the arrangement during a trip to China last year. A senior intelligence chief who is quoted by Malone, said that weapons supplied by the Chinese were being handed out to the military in preparation for a brutal new crackdown against Mugabe’s opponents. As well as paying a share of the diamond profits to Mugabe’s regime, he confirmed that China has agreed to supply military hardware to Zimbabwe.
“It is a government-to-government deal,” the official told Malone. “It has been signed at the highest level. There is a memorandum of understanding between China and Zimbabwe – – Beijing supplies weapons to us, and we allow them to mine diamonds.”
Gabriel Shumba from the Zimbabwe Blood Diamonds Campaign told SW Radio Africa on Tuesday that “these allegations are a serious source for concern,” which should be investigated. He said it was particularly concerning, given the recent announcement by the Mines Ministry that all future diamond sales would be held in secret. The Ministry said this ahead of a diamond auction earlier this month, which sold an unspecified quantity of stones mined at Chiadzwa. The suspicions are that the sales are being kept secret so that the industrial diamonds wanted by China can be sold through the back door, without public knowledge.
“If the diamonds continue being sold in secret by certain individuals, in exchange for weapons that keep those individuals in power, Zimbabwe is facing a possible blood bath at the next elections,” Shumba said.
The military’s role in the diamond fields is already well documented and the rampant human rights abuses at their hands resulted in the country being banned from international diamond sales last year. That decision has since been overturned after the diamond trade watchdog, the Kimberley Process, in July certified a stockpile of mined Chiadzwa stones as ‘conflict free’. This was after an agreement was reached between the group and the Mines Ministry, which included the phasing out of the military from the area. But the UK’s newspaper report shows clearly that the military is going nowhere, making a mockery of the Kimberley Process decision to allow Zimbabwe’s diamond sales.
Meanwhile the permanent secretary for the Mines Ministry, Thankful Musukutwa, has said he is not prepared to work with civil society’s chosen Kimberley Process representative, Farai Maguwu. Maguwu’s appointment as the ‘focal point’ for the Kimberley Process monitoring team in Zimbabwe was also part of the July agreement with the Mines Ministry.
But Musukutwa said Maguwu had acted in a “treasonous manner” when he met with the Kimberley Process monitor Abbey Chikane in May. Maguwu’s meeting with Chikane was done as part of the Kimberley Process tour of the country, to determine if diamond sales could resume. Maguwu apparently detailed the ongoing abuses at Chiadzwa, and as a result found himself arrested and imprisoned for more than a month. Chikane has been implicated in the arrest, but he remains the appointed monitor. It has been on his recommendations that diamond sales in Zimbabwe resume and there are doubts over his credibility.
Musukutwa reportedly said over the weekend that “Maguwu has adopted a confrontational stance against government,” adding: “I am not prepared to work with him as a focal person for civil society.”
Original date published: 21 September 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201009220056.html?viewall=1