Government Crackdowns
The government launched police crackdowns against illegal miners and smugglers several times since December 2006. In response to a call by the World Diamond Council for a clampdown on smuggling, in November 2008 the Air Force of Zimbabwe was sent, after some police officers began refusing orders to shoot the illegal miners. Up to 150 of the estimated 30,000 illegal miners were shot from helicopter gunships. In 2008 some Zimbabwean lawyers and opposition politicians from Mutare claimed that Shiri was the prime mover behind the military assaults on illegal diggers in the diamond mines in the east of Zimbabwe. Estimates of the death toll by mid-December range from 83 reported by the Mutare City Council, based on a request for burial ground, to 140 estimated by the (then) opposition Movement for Democratic Change - Tsvangirai party. The military operation, known as Operation No Return, also involved searching travellers into and out of the Mutare West area, with people found in possession of foreign currency or diamonds being detained and being forced to fill in holes on the diamond fields.
On 28 January 2009, the government announced plans to resettle some 4,700 villagers from Chiadzwa to the 12,000 ha Transau Farm, on the Odzi River. Although Manicaland Provincial Governor Christopher Mushohwe said that the move had the full support of the local traditional leaders, Chiadzwa villagers protested the resettlement.
Read more about this topic: Marange Diamond Fields
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“If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)