15 December 1999
U.S. Legislators Attack War in Sierra Leone with Anti-Diamond Bill
(Reps. Hall and Wolf speak after seeing victims of violence) (710) By Jim Fisher-Thompson Washington File Staff Writer Washington -- Calling the illicit sale of diamonds in Africa the "fuel" that keeps the bloody civil war in Sierra Leone alive, two U.S. legislators have submitted a bill that calls for an international embargo on gems they say help fund rebel groups that have killed thousands of innocent civilians. Representatives Tony Hall, Democrat of Ohio, and Frank Wolf, Republican of Virginia, announced at a December 10 news conference that they were sponsoring a law aimed at stopping the funds that fuel African conflicts. The bill, called "The Consumer Access to a Responsible Accounting of Trade Act of 2000" or "Carat Act," will alert Americans to "the link between dirty diamonds and war that is at the root of much evil in Africa today," Hall said. Eighty-five to 87 percent of diamonds coming into the United States are good, Hall noted, but a small percentage are "conflict" or "dirty" diamonds, mined or bought clandestinely by rebel movements and sold internationally. Those are the ones his bill is aimed at, the lawmaker explained. Hall and Wolf spoke after returning from a visit to refugee camps in Sierra Leone, where they saw firsthand the effects of rebel atrocities on civilians who had had their limbs hacked off. Hall said one victim told him the rebels made him draw from slips of paper held in a hat that had various body parts written on them. "If you pulled out a paper that said "hand," that is what they cut off," the man explained. Another Sierra Leonean told Hall that rebels gave him the choice between having his two children killed or his hands chopped off. He chose to have his hands cut off, but after the rebels lopped them off they killed his children as well. It is those rebels -- a "ragtag group" that grew to a force of more than 20,000 soldiers in Sierra Leone, thanks largely to the sale of diamonds mined in territory they control -- that Hall said the "Carat Act" would stop. If the bill becomes law, gem diamonds imported into the United States would be required to have a certificate listing where they were mined. If they were mined in Sierra Leone but sold by rebels in Liberia or other countries and not certified by Sierra Leone's Commission for the Management of Strategic Resources, National Reconciliation and Development, then they would be sanctioned under international law, the legislator explained. Although rebels in Sierra Leone signed a peace agreement this summer to end the conflict -- in which many women and children suffered mutilation -- Hall pointed out that "some factions still continue to mine and sell diamonds, and the unspeakable violence that depends on those revenues is also continuing." He cautioned that "if nothing is done about the black market trade in diamonds, the peacekeeping troops going into Sierra Leone this month will find a treacherous situation on the ground. In the past, in the conflict in Angola, for example, Hall said, "the world looked the other way while revenues from diamond sales were used to butcher innocent civilians. This time we should not stand idly by -- we should do whatever it takes to cut off these revenues before they again tempt armed men to grab power from the democratically elected government in Freetown. "We cannot count on the [Lome] peace [accord] to hold while attacks on civilians continue and funds that could ease their suffering are instead channeled into rebels' vaults," Hall told journalists. Wolf, whose Republican Party controls the House of Representatives, said he felt the "Carat Act" was very important and he pledged to call for public hearings into the issue of violence in Sierra Leone and the illicit diamond trade. "I think we need to push more strongly for disarmament in the region," he added, and "this means bringing greater pressure on [President] Charles Taylor [of Liberia], who is backing RUF [the Revolutionary United Front]." (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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