>>106875739They don't really need an excuse. They very clearly view non-Diamond gems as beneath them.
We use rats (and other animals) for all kinds of fucked up research because there aren't many good ethical alternatives. The Diamonds are probably in the same boat, except instead of resorting to animals out of necessity, they resort to lesser gems for the sake of progress. Likely ones that were shattered for some "crime."
So as far as they know, the gems that were shattered are long gone and the experiments are salvaging wasted resources for a brighter future.
The real problem was the conditioning from presumably White that stepping out of line for any reason was grounds for shattering. Shattering for violence I can see, because people like the death penalty in real life. But shattering for cross-fusion is not at all pragmatic - especially considering they were not willing to shatter Pink for fusing for a human, in public no less.
