ダイヤモンド利権

アフマド・テジャン・カバー氏死去＝シエラレオネ前大統領

アフマド・テジャン・カバー氏（シエラレオネ前大統領）１３日、首都フリータウンの自宅で死去。８２歳。
ダイヤモンドの利権をめぐる１１年間の内戦中から２期１０年大統領を務めた。国連平和維持軍などの協力を得て武装解除計画を進め、０２年に内戦の終結を宣言した。死因は不明だが、近年は高血圧に悩まされ、病気がちだったという。（ＡＦＰ時事）。（2014/03/14-05:19）
http://www.jiji.com/jc/c?g=int_30&k=2014031400064

Republic of Sierra Leone DeBeers - Google 検索 via kwout

闇金と宝石商はYUDAYAKUZAの伝統的・・・（爆ｗｗｗｗｗ | 匿名党 via kwout

飯島勲 シエラレオネ - Google 検索 via kwout

、、、（爆ｗｗｗｗｗｗ

Sierra Leone:



The diamond history of Sierra Leone began in 1935 when De Beers legally took complete control of the dining prospects in Sierra Leone for the next 99 years. Despite De Beers presence, Lebanese traders within Sierra Leone quickly discovered the immense profits that could be made by smuggling diamonds out of the country. As a result, illicit mining and trading soon increased throughout Sierra Leone.

By the 1950’s the government of Sierra Leone had virtually given up on policing the majority of its diamond industry. All foreign investors were forced to provide their own security for both their personnel and mines. The government did however tighten security in two places. They increased their presence in the Kono diamond district and in Freetown the diamond export center. The result was that illegitimate diamonds were diverted from the high security cites and taken to Liberia and an illegal diamond pipeline between Sierra Leone and Liberia was born. The government seeming took further unintentional steps to increase illegal mining when in passed the Alluvial Mining Scheme in 1956. The scheme allowed indigenous miners to receive mining and trading licenses and the number of illicit miners increased by over 75,000 people[3].

In 1961, Sierra Leone gained independence from Great Britain. It was after gaining its independence did diamond smuggling become a political problem as well as an economic one. In 1968, populist Siaka Stevens became prime minister, bringing the country to a one-party ruler. Stevens was the first person to officially connect the diamond mines to political power and profit, and he encouraged illicit mining to gain political power. He nationalized the diamond mines and De Beers' SLST by creating the National Diamond Mining Co. Through NDMC, Stevens gave himself and his key advisor, Lebanese businessman Jamil Mohammed, control of the diamond mines. Under Stevens' authority, legitimate diamond trading dropped from more than two million carats in 1970 to 595,000 carats in 1980 and 48,000 carats in 1988[4].
At the end of Stevens' 17-year rule, De Beers removed itself from Sierra Leone. In 1984, De Beers' sold its remaining shares to the Precious Metals Mining Co., controlled by Mohammed. A year later, Stevens retired and his successor, Joseph Momoh, took control of Sierra Leone. With little political or leadership skills, he placed even more responsibility in Mohammed's hand. As a result illicit diamond mining within Sierra Leone flourished. By 1991, Sierra Leone had a corrupt government and openly illicit diamond trading and was a vulnerable and attractive site for armed rebellion. On March 23, a civil war began when the Revolutionary United Front, a group of 100 fighters from Sierra Leone and Liberia, invaded east Sierra Leone.
Foday Sankoh, an ex-army sergeant led the RUF. Sankoh said he represented the urban dispossessed and promised impoverished peasants a greater share in the mineral wealth misused by the corrupt government[5]. However, Sankoh used brutal tactics, such as mutilation and amputation, against these same peasants to allegedly expose the government's inability to protect its citizens.
Throughout the nine-year civil war, fighting concentrated in and around the diamond districts. RUF leaders were very aware that whoever controls the diamond mines controls Sierra Leone, and profits from smuggled diamonds funded its attack. Since the civil war began, Sierra Leone has suffered complete desolation. It is wholly dependent on outside support from Great Britain, Nigeria and South Africa's security forces. Sierra Leone's own army is corrupt; its soldiers are nicknamed "Sobels," rebels by day, soldiers by night.
Finally, in July 1999, Sankoh and Sierra Leone's president, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, signed the Lome Peace Accord under pressure from the U.N. and the U.S. government. RUF agreed to surrender its forces for a share in Sierra Leone's government. As a concession to RUF, Sankoh was released from the death sentence he earned for his war crimes and made chairman of the Strategic Mineral Resources Commission, a position that controlled most of Sierra Leone's diamond exports.
Although the accord was long in coming, it brought a short peace. On Jan. 6, 2000, just seven months after it was signed, RUF revived its attacks on Freetown and Sierra Leone's government. Despite its promises to surrender its forces, RUF never did. Now Sierra Leone is once again battling RUF, and control over the diamond mines is still at the center of the conflict. Ultimately as a result, the UN has issued a ban on nongovernmental diamonds for Sierra Leone.



The Costs of Conflict Diamonds:



Sierra Leone has suffered terrible social and economic costs as a result of its civil war and fight over diamond control. Under the cover of warfare the rebels committed heinous crimes against humanity in the form of murder, rape, and mutilation. The war between 1991 and 1999 claimed over 75,000 lives, caused 500,000 Sierra Leoneans to become refugees, and displaced half of the countries 4.5 million people[6]. Also during this period, the Sierra Leone economy was being cheated out of millions of dollars in the form of illegal diamonds.

Rape of women and girls was widespread and systematic during Sierra Leone's conflict through most of the 1990s, and is reportedly continuing on a smaller scale in areas still controlled by rebels in the north and east of the country. Members of the RUF primarily perpetrated this brutal tactic as a tool of war to terrorize the civilian population into submission and break-apart families and communities. In addition, to the thousands of women who were raped, thousands more women and girls were abducted and taken into the bush to travel with the rebels and to act as domestic sex slaves to the fighters. . In many cases the abducted were gang raped, beaten, starved, tortured, forced to walk long distances carrying heavy loads, and told they would be killed if they tried to escape.

The rebels have been reluctant to turn over children in spite of their obligation to do so under the Lome Peace Accord and have been particularly slow to hand over girls. Girls and young women who managed to escape from the rebels or who were released, suffer a variety of consequences such as sexually transmitted infections. These include HIV/AIDS, trauma and post traumatic stress disorder, extreme anxiety and alienation by their communities and families. Numerous women also were left with scarring and serious gynecological problems, such as damaged uteruses and bladders. A high percentage of the survivors are pregnant or are now single mothers of so-called "rebel babies."

The Rebels also terrorize citizens with the systemic mutilation of men, women, and children. The rebels had teams dedicated to capturing citizens and mutating them. Often times they cut off both the victims’ hands and put the hands in a rice bag and took it back to their commanders. Such behavior is not an isolated event or the product of undisciplined soldiers, it is the rebels gruesome strategy and can be traced back to the leaders of the RUF. As a result of these acts, the thousands of surviving amputees in Sierra Leone were forced in to refugee camps. Many of these people are illiterate and support themselves by farming the land, and they are left futureless as a result of their needless amputations.







Eliminating Blood Diamonds:



As a result of these grave tragedies, the world is now starting to take small steps in an effort to eliminate conflict diamonds. The UN has placed a embargos on conflict diamonds, while providing peacekeepers, economic aid, and other sources of assistance. There has also been the introduction of the Kimberley process. The Kimberley Process is a certification system for monitoring a diamonds origin from the mine, up until it reaches the hands of the distributors. With this process all diamonds collected from a mine are sealed in containers, and given warrantees. As they move from location to location, they are given further identifications to verify their origin. The United States is currently working on legislation for the Clean Diamond Act. This act would ban any diamonds that come from an unknown origin. Both the Clean Diamond Act and the Kimberly process are an attempt to create a diamond paper trail and to eliminate conflict diamonds from the diamond markets. While these resolutions are both a good start it is clear that it will take more for this conflict to be resolved.

The main problem with conflict diamonds is the structure of the diamond industry. Since, De Beers controls the majority of the market, they lack real incentive to address the problem of conflict diamonds due to the fact that conflict diamonds are such a small portion of the worldwide diamond sales. However, if the diamond industry were a truly completive market then conflict diamonds would have a greatly adverse affect on the whole market and would be quickly addressed and dealt with by the member of the diamond industry. Such a fact raises the question, why is there still a monopoly in the diamond market today? De Beers in still operating off the contracts that were made at the end of the nineteenth century with governments that for the most part do not still exist in those countries. Many of the contracts were made when these African countries were still colonies of European nations. Today, most of these countries have gained their independence but still honor these ancient contracts. This is where the newly formed African Union should step in on behalf of these African nations and challenge the current legality of these contracts in world court. All African nations would benefit from the release of these contracts and being allowed to have control over their own mines. If they were given this control they could use the increased revenues from the mines to reinvest into the growth and development of that particular country and its economy.

As demonstrated above with the atrocities that have occurred in Sierra Leone, it is apparent that some action immediately needs to be taken to eliminate these sources of death and destruction. Whether the solution is, the current action that is taking place or a more dramatic solution, action needs to be taken now because enough lives have been ruined and lost over a valueless piece of carbon.