Israeli Blood Diamond Campaign claims another victory

international | rights, freedoms and repression | news report Saturday February 05, 2011 00:57 by Sean Clinton

Kimberley Process retreats under pressure

In a significant development for the growing global Boycott Israeli Blood Diamond campaign and the BDS movement in general, the UN supported Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KP) has taken down its Facebook page: The Kimberley Process - The Official Page of the Chair of the KP.

Diamonds accont for betwwee 1/3 and 1/4 of Israel's exports

The page was set up less than a year ago to promote public confidence in the KP as an effective mechanism to eliminate conflict or blood diamonds from the international diamond market. However, when people posted questions asking how the KP could justify labelling diamonds from Israel that fund war crimes in Gaza as “conflict free” their questions were deleted and they were blocked. As more and more people swamped the page with questions about the certification of Israeli blood diamonds as conflict free, the Israeli Chair of the Kimberley Process, Mr. Boaz Hirsch, abandon the site and didn’t update it for months - even when the Annual Plenary meeting of the Kimberley Process was held in Jerusalem in November 2010.

The KP has now deleted the page in an attempt to prevent more people learning that according to the narrow KP definition of a conflict or blood diamond, diamonds which fund war crimes in Sierra Leone are classed as blood diamonds but diamonds that fund war crimes in Gaza are embellished with the title “conflict free” and allowed to contaminate the global diamond market.

The link to the Facebook page on the KP web site remains in place but it no longer works. A cached copy of the page the KP don’t want you to see can be viewed at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8654956/Kimberley%20Process%20T...r.htm

For further information about the trade in Israeli blood diamonds go to http://www.ipsc.ie/campaigns_diamond_boycott.php#meplet and http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=154412524589404