**A major diamond firm has issued a trade ban on all diamonds from Zimbabwe’s Marange fields because of “severe and continued human rights violations”.**The Rapaport Group and its Rapnet diamond trading network also called on other major diamond manufacturing and trading bodies to do the same.
Rights activists say troops killed 200 people at the Marange field last year.
Zimbabwe’s government has denied abuse claims and vowed last week to pull its soldiers out of the diamond field.
Earlier this month the body that regulates the sale of so-called blood diamonds, the Kimberley Process, rejected attempts by rights groups to suspend Zimbabwe.
“The Kimberley Process is being used as a fig leaf to cover up human rights abuses in the diamond sector”
Rapaport Chairman Martin Rapaport
The organisation instead gave Harare until June 2010 to reform its mining practices.
But Rapaport group chairman Martin Rapaport said: “The Kimberley Process is being used as a fig leaf to cover up human rights abuses in the diamond sector.”
The group says the ban affects diamonds from Marange only, not from anywhere else in Zimbabwe.
Rapnet claims to be the world’s largest diamond trading network, with daily online listings of gems worth more than $4bn.
The world’s biggest diamond producer, De Beers, said it had already told its buyers not to deal in diamonds from Marange.