OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, Oct 11 (OneWorld) - Allies of dispossessed African Bushmen assailed Botswana's diamond industry as the Southern African country's president told a U.S. audience Tuesday the gem is an economic lifeline.

Survival International, the UK-based indigenous peoples' advocates, said Botswana had forcibly evicted communities of Bushmen from their homelands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve to make way for diamond prospecting.

The organization further accused Botswanan authorities of putting down peaceful protests and of wrongfully arresting Bushman protesters on charges of unlawful assembly.

''The Gana and Gwi [Bushmen] now face total extinction as peoples, not from war but from being robbed of their land,'' said Stephen Corry, Survival International's director. ''It's horrific that this can happen in the 21st century.''

In contrast, Botswanan President Festus Mogae on Tuesday promoted the notion of ''diamonds for development'' in talks with members of the Council on Foreign Relations.

The issue of the Bushmen was alluded to in passing during Mogae's visit to the think tank, said an observer at the event.

Supporting Mogae's position is the World Diamond Council, which estimates that revenues from the industry have enabled every child in Botswana to receive free education up to the age of 13.

Diamonds account for more than half of government revenue and contribute significantly to Botswana's gross domestic product, said the official Botswana Press Agency. Uncut, unpolished diamonds generate 70 percent of the country's foreign currency earnings.

Much international attention in the 1990s focused on the use of diamonds by armed factions in Central and West Africa to finance bloody civil wars.

Such ''conflict diamonds'' now account for less than 1 percent of the diamond trade, down from 4 percent in 2002, according to the World Diamond Council. That was when governments, advocacy groups, and the diamond industry banded together under the U.N. banner and established the Kimberley Process, a certification scheme designed to eliminate the bloodstained commerce. Botswana is due to chair the scheme from next month.

The New York-based diamond council brings together the diamond industry, governments of diamond-producing countries, and international banks.

Under the Kimberley initiative, producers who meet a raft of criteria can have their diamonds' ethical pedigree certified.

''The certification is crucial to countries such as Botswana, which is the world's leading producer of quality diamonds,'' the government press agency said Monday. ''The gem's dirty image could have a negative impact on the economy.''

The Bushmen have considered the territory that now forms the Kalahari reserve their ancestral home for more than 20,000 years. The government in Gaborone has been relocating them from the game reserve since 2000 and has cited the need to develop tourism in the region as its reason.

In turn, the Bushmen have sued the government and their claims to the land remain pending before the Botswana High Court.

Last month, they seized on the forthcoming release of 'The Blood Diamond' to write an open letter appealing to the film's star, Leonardo DiCaprio, for help in their bid to return to their homeland.

''Friends have told us that you are in a film, 'The Blood Diamond,' which shows how badly diamonds can hurt. We know this. When we were chased off our land, officials told us it was because of the diamond finds,'' said the letter, which appeared in Variety.

The Bushmen have called for a boycott of diamonds from Botswana and South African miner De Beers Group, which they say is prospecting on their land. De Beers owns a 50 percent stake in Botswana-based Debswana.

Regardless of whether the Bushmen succeed in enlisting DiCaprio, the film could threaten Botswana's rise from poverty if it sparks a blanket reaction against diamonds, Lieutenant General Mompati Merafhe, the foreign minister, told the United Nations last week.

Merafhe credited the gemstones with playing a large role in Botswana's rise from low-income to middle-income status among developing countries and said diamond revenues continue to finance government spending on education, healthcare, drinking water, roads, telephones, and rural electrification.

Nearly two thirds of the world's diamonds come from Africa. The industry employs some 28,000 people in Southern Africa and is said to support more than 10 million people worldwide.