"The Deadly Cost of 'Ethical' Diamonds: Human Rights Abuses at Petra Diamond's Tanzanian Mine"

The Williamson Diamond Mine in northern Tanzania is owned by Petra Diamonds, a UK listed multinational company, which claims to produce ‘ethical’ diamonds. Yet the company’s glowing marketing spin that “[n]ot only do we respect human rights, but we actively advance them” rings hollow for those who live in the shadow of the Williamson Mine. For many local residents, it is killings and brutal assaults by security personnel which mark their experiences of the mine. The stories they tell are chilling: people shot with little or no warning, stabbed, detained, stripped, beaten, incarcerated for days in a filthy and cramped holding cell by the mine’s entrance, deprived of food and medical treatment, and/or handcuffed to hospital beds at the mine’s medical facility. “They cannot arrest you softly,” one local community leader explained to RAID when interviewed about these experiences in November 2019. The mine’s security guards when beating their victims say “you must feel it.”...

This report is based on research spanning over a year, including two field missions to the Shinyanga region of Tanzania and communities bordering the Williamson Mine. It is informed by 118 interviews with local residents, community leaders, former security personnel, local medical staff and Williamson Mine whistleblowers, as well as extensive analysis of local reporting, third party reports, and corporate materials published by Petra Diamonds and others. RAID’s findings may understate the level of violence. RAID received additional credible reports of killings, assaults and sexual violence which it has yet to confirm. Further investigation is necessary to verify these reports.