Blood Diamonds

From VII, photographs by Antonin Kratochvil:

It is estimated that at least one million Africans earn pennies a day in the backbreaking and increasingly fruitless search for diamonds – a $60-billion-a-year industry that, back in the 1990s, rebels in Sierra Leone and Liberia financed their carnage from diamonds plucked out of the rivers and traded for arms. During a decade of war about 50,000 people were killed, and thousands had their hands hacked off by rebels. Now, a new Hollywood movie is raising tough questions about Africa’s bloody diamond trade.

Here.