X-Files star Gillian Anderson and other celebrities are boycotting diamonds from Botswana because of the way the government treats the Kalahari Bushmen, a human rights group Survival International said.

Other celebrities boycotting include Joanna Lumley, the voice of Maudeline Everglot in Corpse Bride, Ace Ventura actress Sophie Okonedo, British actor Mark Rylance, and British children's author and illustrator Quentin Blake.
Jewelers are also boycotting. 

Recognized jeweler Pippa Small said, "As jewelers, we have for years made sure we do not use blood diamonds.  Now we also need to boycott Botswana diamonds until the Bushmen are allowed to live and hunt freely on their land.”

"People should know that far from being an expensive token of eternal love, Botswana diamonds are a symbol of the nasty oppression of southern Africa's first people," Survival International's director Stephen Corry said in a statement.
Although they were some of southern Africa's first inhabitants, diamonds were found in their traditional lands in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in the 1980s and the Kalahari Bushmen were forced outside their original area of habitation. 

In 2006, a court ruled the Bushmen had a right to return, but kept them from accessing their only source of water.  Before this they had tried to force them off their land and keep them from hunting.  The London-based human rights group is accusing the Botswana government of abusing the Bushmen.

Though their population was once in the millions in southern Africa, the Kalahari Bushmen only have about 100,000 of their people left.  Almost half of them are in Botswana. Others are in Angola, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Botswana produces almost a quarter of the world's diamonds.  The diamonds are half its government's revenue.

The Botswana diamonds boycott was launched in London and San Francisco with an organized letter hand-in outside the De Beers store.  De Beers is partially owned by the Botswana government. 

Both parties are going back into negotiations to see what can be done.
"That's a process that's painfully slow but I can assure you there is great progress being made and we're hopeful that we'll arrive at some conclusion," the minister of the environment, wildlife and tourism in Botswana told the BBC's Focus on Africa program.

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