Blood Diamond was the top-rented film and came in second in terms of DVD sales in the US as of March 25th, just five days after it went to video. The movie has now earned $9 million from DVD and VHS rentals (the DVD sales figures somehow seem to elude me) and has taken in $57.25 million at the box office.
And in some more bad news for the industry. Just when things were looking up for the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from the diamond industry’s point of view, as well as on the political front, the country witnessed some of its worst fighting since last year’s election as government forces battled guards loyal to the defeated presidential candidate Jean-Pierre Bemba.
People walking past the UNICEF offices in Kinshasa, seen through a bullet hole. Photo credit: (AFP/Lionel Healing)
Estimates put the death toll between 200 and 600 people. However, 225 of Bemba’s fighters have now agreed to join the army. An earlier refusal to do so had sparked this entire bloody incident.
“The DRC had its best export year since the discovery of diamonds 100 years ago,” writes Ian Smillie of Partnership Africa Canada in a white paper titled DDI: A Different Kind of Diamond Mining. Published by Madison Dialogue, a new cross-sector initiative, the paper outlines the challenges facing the artisanal diamond mining sector, which employs some 800,000 people in the DRC. According to Partnership Africa Canada, the DRC’s official diamond exports topped $895 million in 2005.
But renewed violence in the DRC will only lead to a downward spiral that could potentially taint the diamond industry. Perhaps it is time the diamond industry through a global body like the World Diamond Council got more involved in United Nations peacekeeping efforts. Letting things slide will simply have the past come back to haunt us. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed for 2007.
