Blood Diamonds

Greg Campbell talked about his book Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones, published by Westview Press. The book is about how the sale of diamonds was used to arm the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group whose preferred method of punishment for enemies was amputation, during Sierra Leone’s civil war. The war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, took the lives of over 50,000 people and left over one million people displaced. The book also traces the history of De Beers, the South African based diamond company that manufactured the demand for, and dominated the distribution of, the gem for much of the twentieth century. Mr. Campbell took questions from the audience following his remarks. close