Blood, Diamonds and Child Soldiers

I have never struggled writing a review of a movie before.

It’s not because the plot of this movie is so intricate that I cannot review it. It’s just that it so profoundly affected me that I am not sure reviewing it as a movie really does it justice.

This is not a movie. It is a warning sign. It is a wake-up-and-smell-the-insanity sign.

The film is broadly about:

Blood Diamond tells of a bond between an ex-mercenary from Zimbabwe (DiCaprio), who smuggles diamonds out of war-torn Sierra Leone in the late 1990s, and a poor fisherman (Djimon Hounsou) whose son is kidnapped by rebels and trained to kill.

(quote from Epoch Times review, link below)

And the film seeks to make us understand that these “conflict diamonds” are illegally mined gems whose profits buy guns and fuel wars

The Epoch Times has an article here called “‘Blood Diamond’ Has a Point, but Who Will Listen?” which highlights the conflict diamond issue which the film itself is promoting.

To call this movie excessively violent would be an understatement. Then again, the topic at hand - Civil War; Rebel Groups v/s Governments is a violent topic that needs to be seen for what is it. I for one, living in my little bubble, never really grasped the sick horror that is a reality in so many countries.

Sure I know that many countries in the world are still fighting, rebel groups against governments - but to see the refugee camps, to see the horror of it all, it’s giving me goosebumps even now, just thinking about it.

What was by far the worse thing in the movie for me, was the kidnapping of innocent children and the methods by which rebel groups use them to further their own purposes.

I saw this show late Friday night. Saturday I got up thinking about it. Sunday night & I’m thinking - how dare I say this movie affects me if I just get all shook up for a day or two and then forget all about it.

Then again, I think, what can I do?

I google kidnapped rebel children and come up with about 580,000 results.

I see that people in Sri Lanka are facing this same problem. See this BBC article, dated as close as 19th Dec 2006.

Read the horrible facts of what’s happening in Uganda here and here and I quote:

“More than 25,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA since the war began. This year, an average of 20 children have been abducted every week”

And it’s the same in as many as “50 countries throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America”. See a list of countries where child soldiers are being used here.

After finding so much information - most of which only shocked and upset me more - I finally found a link with information and a tiny ray of hope in the form of positive action against this insanity.

It’s on the website of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in a special section called “War-Affected Children“ and it offers you relevant information as well as things one can do to help.

Another similar website is Caritas Australia’s section on Child Soldiers and human trafficking

I strongly urge you to go to the 2 above links and read up. If it touches your heart that “more than 300,000 girls and boys under 18 are fighting in armed conflicts worldwide”, then I pray that you may do something about it.

In addition to doing what I can from the above link, since I always consider prayer a powerful weapon, I shall pray.

I pray thanks that almost everyone reading this has no personal experience of the horror so many innocents are forced to go through.

And I pray for peace, real peace.