36 16.8 Human Rights Watch: Private mining companies perpetrating shocking abuses At a press conference held by Partnership Africa Canada and Human Rights Watch on August 30, 2011, in Johannesburg, HRW told the media that Zimbabwe police and private security guards employed by mining companies in Marange were shooting, beating and unleashing attack dogs on poor, local unlicensed miners. 158 The organisation said the evidence gathered by Human Rights Watch contradicted claims that areas controlled by private mining companies, instead of by the Zimbabwe government alone, are relatively free of abuses. ���A clinical officer in the town close to the fields told HRW: ‘We have so many people coming to the clinic with dog attacks. It’s easy to tell they’ve been bitten by dogs. You see the marks. During the week we treat around five or more miners with dog bites. They tell us that private security guards are the ones who set the dogs upon them. They say that its guards working for Mbada.’” 159 17 ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION DUE TO UNREGULATED MINING Slave-labourers dig Zimbabwe's Blood-Diamonds160 157 BBC Panorama, ‘Diamond field: Zimbabwe torture camp discovered’, (notes from script) 8 August 2011: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-14377215 158 Human Rights Watch, ‘Zimbabwe: Rampant abuses in Marange diamond fields’, 30 August 2011: http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/30/zimbabwe-rampant-abuses-marange-diamond-fields 159 Human Rights Watch, ‘Zimbabwe: Rampant abuses in Marange diamond fields’, 30 August 2011: http://www.hrw.org/news/2011/08/30/zimbabwe-rampant-abuses-marange-diamond-fields 160 Digital Journal, ‘Slave-labourers dig Zimbabwe’s blood-diamonds’, 22 January 2009: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/265726#ixzz1SPTvXskN