Tiffany’s continues to feel the heat over connection to IDF unit accused of war crimes

posted on: Dec 19, 2015

Sean Clinton

Mondoweiss
For the past two weeks people have been bombarding Tiffany’s Facebook page with questions about the company’s funding of Givati Brigade, a unit of the Israeli military that has been accused of war crimes.

At first Tiffany’s ignored the comments but as people continued posting they eventually responded as follows:

“We believe that knowing the origin of our precious metals and gemstones is key to ensuring that mines are operated in environmentally and socially responsible ways. For that reason, Tiffany has direct sourcing relationships with mines around the world. In addition, the vast majority of rough diamonds sourced by Tiffany are also cut and polished in our own state-of-the-art facilities. We believe in investing in local manufacturing, paying a living wage, transferring both craft and management skills to our workforce and contributing to the well-being of the communities in which we operate. To learn more, please visit Tiffany.com/CSR.”

Human rights activists protest outside Tiffany’s on Old Bond Street in London at Christmas in 2014. (Photo: www.inminds.com)

More and more comments/questions followed and Tiffany’s ignored them for a week until yesterday when they pasted a new response:

“Tiffany sources all of its rough diamonds either directly from a known mine, or a supplier with multiple known mines, because we believe that traceability is key to ensuring environmental and social responsibility. One of those sources is a mine in Sierra Leone operated by Koidu Limited – an indirect subsidiary of BSG Resources – not the Steinmetz Foundation. We condemn human rights abuses of any kind.”

This is clearly an attempt to distance Tiffany’s from the Steinmetz Foundation but as long as they continue to source diamonds from Koidu they will remain inextricably linked. Diamonds sourced from Koidu generate the revenue used by the Foundation to fund the Givati war criminals so when someone buys a Tiffany’ diamond they are buying a blood diamonds that funds war criminals.

There are demos planned in Dublin and London for tomorrow during which we will be highlighting the linkage between Tiffany’s and Israeli war crimes.

Source: mondoweiss.net