I watched the movie Blood Diamond over the weekend. I had heard of it in the past and pretty much ignored it because I just wasn’t interested at all in the movie. I decided to give it a shot for the extra credit and found myself wondering how in the hell humans can be so vastly different, yet the same.
The genocide in Africa seems to be such a constant event that it becomes so normal that it is just ignored, I have even thought in the past that it is odd when they aren’t killing each other, an attitude that is very disconnected from the problem.
In this movie the genocide is not what we normally think of with one culture wiping out another. This movie it is rebels within the country of Sierra Leone killing other tribes folk in the country and forcing them into slavery or soldiering. This movie shows how the diamonds are gotten through slave labor and then sold in order to obtain weapons to fight the “gubmint” as they are called in the movie.
This was allowed to perpetuate because people in more “civilized” countries simply wanted the diamonds for their own purposes and not caring about the people who are hurt in the process. This allowed the rebels to overthrow the government and run amok in the country.
The solution from this movie was awareness and desire of the rest of the world to stomp out the “blood diamond” trade. Stop purchasing these diamonds and stop putting money into the hands of rebels or others who would exploit and murder for their own greed.
Legio I Lynx Fulminata 