Expelled Diamond Diggers Scraping By on DRC Border

Poor, hungry, often without any belongings, sometimes in ill health, around 43,400 Congolese expelled from Angola were left on Congo’s border to fend for themselves, according to a report by the United Nations news service IRIN.

Angola, in a drive to protect its diamond riches from illegal mining, has been expelling diggers in a campaign that started in 2006.

“Most of them have lost all their property and resources,” said Guy-Marin Kamandji, the officer in charge of communication for the Catholic charity, Caritas. “Plundered in Angola, some of them lost their hard-earned wealth after having worked for more than a decade in these areas.”

And while most of the expelled are men, about 30 percent are women and children, some of them victims of gang-rape by soldiers of the Angolan army, Kamandji said.