Diamonds are a retailer’s best friend

“Others are on their way,” she said. “They will come armed with revenge. My little brother’s death will not go unnoticed...not by you or the venomous terrorizers who keep fighting over rocks they call precious. Precious to whom? Not my people. They will come, just like me. This is in no way over. The diamond owners and intermediaries must end their hold over our children and my country. Five deaths for my brother - that is still not enough. Do what you want with me...it does not matter.  My brother will not come back from the grave.”

The above is an excerpt from my third book called The Lie. It is the third installment in the “Howard Watson Intrigue” series. It is also a quick and compelling view of the diamond wars from the victims’ perspective.

Unless you have been living under a rock lately you have heard people mention the video that has gone viral on Joseph Kony, the head of the Lord’s Resistance Party, a Ugandan guerilla group seemingly bent on ridding its country of its children. Why else would it use young children for their fighting?

Oh yeah, I forgot.They already killed all of their parents.

I don’t care if a country wants to fight another country over…whatever. I do care when they use young children to do their fighting. How are these wars being funded? Where are Kony and others getting the funds to purchase these guns? Some say the U.S. Others say illicit diamond sales. (Illicit diamonds refer to those diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, usually in Africa where around two-thirds of the world's diamonds are extracted.)

Most of us are unaware of the causes of conflicts that claim as its victims the young and the helpless. Diamonds are not precious when children ages 7 to 12 are being maimed and tortured and threatened with rape if they don’t succumb to the back breaking task of mining diamonds for those funding an invading army's war efforts, or a warlord's activity.

The next time you just have to buy a diamond consider the consequences of a purchase that might become currency in a war that murders and kidnaps children and other innocent victims. Demand from the retailer a certificate of authenticity for a certified conflict free diamond. If the retailer can’t give you one, go elsewhere…or buy a Moissanite, the next best thing.

Peace.

JoAnn