Are Blood Diamonds Making a Comeback?
In the 2006 movie “Blood Diamond,” Leonardo DiCaprio plays a morally questionable diamond smuggler in war-ravaged Sierra Leone. Although the plotline is pure fiction, the movie is based on real events. In the 1990s, a rebel organization called the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) spread a reign of terror across diamond mining villages in Sierra Leone. The RUF committed brutal acts of torture, rape and murder to intimidate the citizens of Sierra Leone and take control of the country’s diamond mines. Tens of thousands were killed and tens of thousands more lost limbs to the rebels. Young boys were forcibly recruited and brainwashed to work for roving death squads. Meanwhile, some of the diamonds that were mined by slave labor in Sierra Leone were smuggled to neighboring countries and sold to international diamond traders, who either didn’t know the source of the jewels or turned a blind eye to their blood-soaked origins. Rebe
