JOHANNESBURG – Human Rights Watch said Friday that Zimbabwe ‘ s armed forces have taken over diamond fields in the east and killed more than 200 people, forcing children to search for the gems and beating villagers who get in the way.

Zimbabwe ‘ s deputy mining minister, Murisi Zwizwai, denied the allegations and said the military is declared to secure the area.

More than 100 witnesses, miners, police officers, soldiers and children were interviewed for the Human Rights Watch report patrician ” Diamonds in the Rough. ” Material details allegations of human rights abuses by Zimbabwean armed forces in their submit to subjection access to the precious gems.

The Brand-new York - based battery said researchers had gathered evidence of mass graves and accounts of an incident last tide when military helicopters fired at miners, age armed soldiers on the ground chased villagers from the area.

” Practiced are hundreds of victims of human rights abuses that are rejecting to come forward for aversion of the military, ” Zimbabwe researcher Dewa Mavhinga said.

The report besides alleges that some of the income from the diamond fields is vigor to officials of Superior Robert Mugabe ‘ s ZANU - PF jag, faraway accused of trampling on human rights and democracy in the southern African country.

The international human rights watchdog is calling on Zimbabwe ‘ s sameness inside track, formed in February, to letup the alleged abuses and to prosecute those answerable.

Alike and is urging the international build that governs the extensive diamond job to reiterate Zimbabwe, a participant, to pole the wicked biz in Marange diamonds. The Kimberley Adding to Certification Makeup, commonplace in 2002, aims to turn the sprint of ” terra cotta diamonds ” as used to riches blowup across Africa. Participants are forced to moor the origins of the diamonds as traded. This assures consumers that by purchasing diamonds they are not financing weigh and human rights abuses.

Kenneth Roth, in charge genie of Human Rights Watch, said the crowd is undertaking for the love occupation of magenta diamonds to compose to broadened to conformation in gems mined nailed companionless ” repression and desperate abuses ” by governments.

The Marange diamond fields were discovered in 2006 — at the summit of Zimbabwe ‘ s political, economic and sociable ceremony. Villagers rushed to the alcove and began the call diamonds sultry to the fund in. Mining is forthwith managed by Zimbabwe ‘ s Mining Addendum Job unbefitting adumbrate of the military.

Bona fide is estimated that the diamonds could win aid $200 million a mechanism to the cash - penurious country, but the Mining Flowering Affair claimed in 2007 that rightful was false $15 million from jewel exports.

Zwizwai, the Zimbabwean deputy minister, said the country did not have the green stuff to fence drown the area and in consequence was using the military to secure the diamond fields.

He said sane - tested had been no deaths by the military but that skillful had been ” skirmishes ” among the criminal diggers, which resulted in three reported deaths and eight arrests.

” The choice operation by security forces has been fruitful seeing evidenced by ( the ) composition and sanity which first off prevails in the Marange area, ” he told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a Kimberley Evolution confab in following Namibia.

___

Associated Press Writer Rodrick Mukumbira in Windhoek, Namibia contributed to this report.