Hello Anna,
My African friend was a bit reluctant to talk about his story. He does ask that if you use his story on your website, he would prefer to remain anonymous, as he still fearful. This is about as much as he wanted to contribute, and I translated sentence by sentence, which sometimes did not make a lot of sense, but he was very emotional throughout and I did not want to loose that.
I know that I had a very personal conversation about this with him afterwards, and he deeply expressed that from what he knows about Diamonds (ironically he is now a Geologist and professor at a University), they are not as rare as people think they are.
His point was that De Beers is rich for a reason........and that reason is tied to the Civil War.
My Story:
I was born to the Mende people in 1972 in Sembe Liberia and only a short distance of 17 Kilometers from Sierra Leon. I was a son born into a family of 14 other children. Our family was large with many uncles and aunts and cousins. My life is a sad story of fighting, loss and running always looking back over my shoulder.
I was just a young teenager when the civil war broke out in my country, and things are still bad there today. I have lost several toes and fingers and was brutalized before being smuggled out of this country to live with relatives in France.
Everything revolved around the war and how to fund it. I lost half of my family in the early 90's and have been part of this conflict through smuggling diamonds abroad to safe zone to be sold as conflict free diamonds, just so that the moneys earned can support the war. In some way or another any diamond that is mined in my country, supports the war directly or indirectly.
One of my uncles was laborer for De Beers mining process and knows that indirectly everyone takes a cut; diamonds are just too important to women globally so honest people turn dishonest and are wanting to profit. Money is a bad motivator and robberies are very common and disfigurement of family members to get diamond trade is very much intact today.
I still have family in parts of Africa and some of them work for De Beers who know what is going on. We hate them but we rely on them for money and assistance. Although they have done a lot of good for our country, they are also part of the problem. If De Beers would not have made diamonds in big advertising campaigns, the "not so rare" diamond would be not so much money and could not support the war.
Anonymous - June 10 2008 |
