Celebrities boycott Botswana over Bushmen

  1. Posted on Sunday 7 November 2010 - 07:30
    Mtheto Lungu
    Image of Mtheto Lungu
    Mtheto Lungu, AfricaNews reporter in Lilongwe, Malawi
    Several celebrities have said they are boycotting Botswana over allegations the country is abusing Kalahari Bushmen. X-FILES star Gillian Anderson and British actress Joanna Lumley are among those that have sworn not t travel to the country or wear its diamonds.
    Botswana
    Survival International (SI), a human rights group announced in a statement last week the two, including British actress Sophie Okonedo, British illustrator Quentin Blake and theatre actor Mark Rylance have agreed not to use diamonds mined in the country.

    SI accuses the government of Botswana's President Ian Khama of denying the Bushmen access to water and is calling for a boycott of Botswana's diamonds, but the world's top producer of diamonds, denies it mistreats the Bushmen.

    “Everyone has a right to their basic needs. Bushmen children also deserve education and we are saying their way of life is denying them this important element, among many others,” a government official told the BBC.

    Based in London, SI campaigns for better treatment of indigenous people around the world, and has been particularly seized with the situation of Bushmen living in Botswana's Central Kalahari Game Reserve.

    The group also staged protests outside two stores belonging to diamond mining giant De Beers - one in London, the other in San Francisco. Botswana has part ownership of De Beers.

    In the 1980s diamonds were found in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, traditional home of the Bushmen where government pressured the Bushmen to move from the area. In a landmark 2006 case, however, the Bushmen were given the green light to return and continue hunting.

    SI believes the government is bent on destroying the Bushmen’s lifestyle by denying them access to a well.

    A week-long conference of the Kimberley Process, which adjudicates on the provenance of suspected "blood diamonds", was meanwhile under way in Jerusalem.

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