deliberately go to diamond fields without any form of identification in order to evade police
and also because most bodies were discovered in advanced stages of decomposition.93
According to a medical officer based at Murambinda Hospital in Buhera:
On November 11 an army truck with seven uniformed and armed soldiers
came from Marange with 17 bodies of people they said were illegal diamond
miners. The bodies had bullet wounds and were decomposing. The soldiers
ordered us to take the bodies and arrange for burial. All the bodies were
unidentified and we entered their details as “unknown” and “brought in
dead” from Marange.94
A villager from Muedzengwa in Chiadzwa who travelled to Murambinda hospital to collect
the body of his brother killed by soldiers in the diamond fields told Human Rights Watch:
I travelled to Murambinda after a sympathetic member of the police had told
me soldiers had taken my brother’s body to Murambinda Hospital. At the
hospital I had difficulty identifying my brother’s body because he was in a
pile of bodies heaped on the floor of the mortuary. I saw several bodies that I
suspect were of other diamond miners also killed in the operation.95
As the military operation continued, soldiers also began to take bodies of dead miners to
Mutare General Hospital, where the bodies were soon piling up in the mortuary there.
Medical staff at the hospital told Human Rights Watch:
Army trucks made several trips to this hospital in the first three weeks of
November 2008 bringing dead bodies to the mortuary. Between November 1
and November 12, soldiers had brought in 107 bodies from Marange, of
which 29 bodies were identified and collected by relatives. 78 bodies we
marked “Brought in Dead” (B.I.D) from Marange, identity unknown. We
entered cause of death as unknown although many of the bodies had visible
bullet wounds. The soldiers who brought them in informed us that the bodies
were of unknown illegal diamond miners killed in Marange.
93
Human Rights Watch interview with police officer O.D., Mutare, February 21, 2009.
94
Human Rights Watch interview with medical officer E.M., Mutare, February 7, 2009.
95
Human Rights Watch interview with villager J.C., Mutare, February 7, 2009.
Diamonds in the Rough
32
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