Quote:
Originally posted by justamom
Arya, last year I was watching a documentary on the diamond mines. Can you tell me if it was about the same area?
(I never get to watch a full documentary...I usually tune in after missing some pretty important info!!!)
The piece showed how the militants turned the village into basically, a situation of slavery. Any dissent was met with punishment not only to the adult, but they would chop off the legs of their infants. It showed the MAJORITY of individuals living in this town with a limb missing...even the children.
They pointed the finger at DeBeers for buying diamonds from the
guerillas and the government for the kickbacks from them.
Is this the same area?
This is really a sad situation. I hope the governmental changes help. but they have so MANY problems...
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For your first question, I have no idea which documentary your talking bout so I can't really comment. Can you give me the title so I can check it out? As for the militant action, that's bout sums up most of the conflict in the Great Lakes. That area needs more attention from the world cause Congo have the potential with their natural resources.
As for DeBeers, I do know that the diamond industry, bout 2 years ago, finally agreed to a code of conduct. They have this method of being able to track down where the diamond is comming from. I'm not exactly sure how they do it, I'll find out. But DeBeers is one of the company that sign the code of conduct. I do know that Oppenheimer (the owner) would not want to be in the bad side of the South African government. Especially since the SA government are very aggressive in their attempt to solve this problem. Also with the African Union being started, there was now way De Beers could've done business the old way if indeed this was how they did it. Most of the diamond are smuggled out to Europe and US and the money are used to finance this civil war. I know Mugabe (Zimbabwe) have a stake in one of the diamond field and that is why the Zimbabwean army is there. Hence, the Congo is known as the first World War in Africa.