S.Leona.- Sierra Leona celebra este domingo su primera conmemoración de la devastadora guerra civil

Hollywood's take on conflict diamonds has brought attention back in a big way to how gems associated with wealth and glamour have too often meant war and suffering in Africa. The film Blood Diamond, which opened on Friday in United States theatres, is set in late 1990s Sierra Leone, when the West African country was in the throes of a civil war in which untraceable diamonds allegedly funded fighters leer más who hacked off people's hands with machetes and burned entire villages. Since then, the situation has improved dramatically. But while diamonds may no longer be fuelling war, they are a long way from helping pull people out of poverty on a continent that produces over half of the world's diamonds, valued at about + billion a year, according to the World Diamond Council. Wars in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo have given way to peace deals -- and even to democratic elections. The DRC just inaugurated its first freely elected president in more than four decades. And since 2003, African diamonds have been labelled and tracked, given 'birth certificates' in a process that tracks gems from extraction to sale to ensure gems in Western jewelry stores don't fund rebels. BLOOD DIAMOND a major 2006 Hollywood Movie with stars Leo DiCaprio, Djimon Hounsou and Jennifer Connelly by Bedford Falls and Edward Zick from a story by Charles Leavitt. PICTURED: Aug 15, 2003; Kono, Sierra Leone; The Revolutionary United Front, RUF, quickly gained a reputation for brutality against the very people they pledged to help in Sierra Leone. In 1996 the government, in effort to boost democratic voting, used the slogan 'the future is in your hands'. The RUF put a cruel twist on the slogan and amputated the hands of potential voters. Over the past decade, the rebels have amputated limbs of over 10,000 people, many of whom are children.
Fecha: 15/08/2003. leer menos

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