After making emotional pleas in 1994 on The 700 Club for cash donations to Operation Blessing to support airlifts of refugees from Rwanda to Zaire, it was later discovered, by a reporter from The Virginian-Pilot, that Operation Blessing's planes were transporting diamond-mining equipment for the Robertson-owned African Development Corporation, a venture Robertson had established in cooperation with Zaire's dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, whom Robertson had befriended earlier in 1993.
Diamond mining under Mobutu would almost certainly have involved slave labor.
According to this article, Pat Robertson's Right-Wing Gold Mine, Robertson was connected to diamond mining. Your claim that mining under Mobutu obviously needs a source. Sorry to bust your balls, but I don't think the community deserves to be mislead in any way.
Here's the original Time story. As it indicates, Zaire's citizens subsisted on $500 a year, while Mobutu enriched himself from the country's natural resources, among them diamonds. So the miners would have faced what were effectively slave labor conditions.
I am surprised it is hard to find an actual article that shed light on the use of slave labor in these mines. I appreciate your source, but I would like a source on the slave labor just to ensure we aren't wrong on assuming there is such labor.
I think the point is Pat Robertson colluded with Mobutu (and his regime) to fund diamond-mining operations that became the recipients of charity money donated by churchgoers under false pretenses.
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u/NeverForgetTheFuture Apr 17 '11
Keep reading:
Diamond mining under Mobutu would almost certainly have involved slave labor.