Diamonds Are a Girl's Worst Enemy

Please bear with me and read this all the way through. I know it's long, but it's so very, very important.

Don’t get me wrong! I’m not some self-righteous hippie type that only wears hemp jewelry. I blush to admit how addicted I am to jewels of all sorts. But I do not own a single diamond and never will.

My first and only diamond was the engagement ring my ex-husband gave me while I was still in high school (in the 1980s). I was too young then to have much of a social conscience, and no one had any reasons not to buy or accept one then. I later sold it, and I now know so much that I will say that I probably should have thrown it away.

When I started going to college, I had a professor who announced to us that diamonds were actually relatively worthless. He told us that contrary to popular belief, they weren’t rare at all! Instead, when a new diamond mine is discovered, DeBeers moves in and buys it and promptly shuts it down. In fact, diamonds were so common around their original diamond mines in Africa that DeBeers had to pave over a vast area around the mines where the diamonds just lay about on the ground in order to prevent anyone from simply picking them up!

I have since researched it and found that everything the prof said was true. Diamonds are actually so common that if their market was a free market, they would end up even cheaper than cubic zirconias! This is a little ‘secret’ known to people in the trade, and one that the diamond merchants devoutly hope you won’t discover. That was when I decided I would never buy or allow someone to give me another diamond as long as I lived. But another little secret of theirs isn’t as harmless.

Have you ever heard of the term “Blood Diamonds” or the “nicer” term: “Conflict Diamonds”? DeBeers and the other diamond merchants have done their best to rephrase the bombastic “Blood Diamonds” because it sounds so…er…violent. But for that very reason, we should never use any term except the most accurate one: Blood Diamonds.

How do you know if your diamond is a Blood Diamond? You don’t. What exactly are they? They are diamonds that have been acquired through a terrible exploitation of fellow human beings all over the world. As one article about them says, “Diamonds are a Warlord’s Best Friend.”

How bad can it be, you ask. Very, very bad.

There are terrorists that wage regular wars to take over diamond mines in Africa and exploit the villagers who live near by. Children are conscripted into the terrorists’ organizations and force-fed drugs to lower their inhibitions so that they can either fight, maim, torture and kill with little conscience or be used as sexual prostitutes. Others are forced to mine until they are worn to death or are killed when they’ve outlived their usefulness. Shallow graves abound where thousands of people have been killed and buried.

Perhaps even worse are the victims who live. They are sometimes maimed, tortured, raped and/or mutilated just to send a message: don’t mess with us! There are people, including children, who have one or both hands cut off and are sent off wandering in the wilderness as a cautionary tale. If they’re…lucky?…they survive the ordeal.

Still other children are victims in India and China where they are working off a family debt by shaping and polishing these diamonds. The child labor alone is inhumane. Many of these children are shackled and work non-stop, with breaks for food and sleep. When they grow old enough they are released if another child from their family is exchanged to replace them. Most families will never work off their ‘debts’.

There is no way to easily track these diamonds. They are bought up by the diamond merchants and, until recently, no one asked where they came from. Yup, those diamonds in your ears or the diamond on your finger may be there because some child lost his limbs or his life to provide it to you. This is no exaggeration.

The good news is that perhaps only 15% of the diamonds on the market are the Blood Diamonds which support and encourage terrorists worldwide. The bad news is that there’s simply no way of knowing which diamond is which. Even the few groups that attempt to provide certification asserting that your diamond is not a Blood Diamond cannot be completely positive that what they say is true. Additionally, certificates can be (and are) forged.

I own an assortment of beautiful solid-gold CZ and moissanite baubles. And each sports a flawless gem which captivates all who see it, at a fraction of the price of a diamond and no cost to my conscience. If a diamond is forever, so are the atrocities that will continue as long as we buy into the falsehood that a diamond represents love and security. Instead, diamonds represent an unnecessary expense for an artificially inflated piece of colorless stone.

Please rethink that diamond you are purchasing this Christmas. If you are determined to spend thousands of dollars on something that is truly only worth hundreds (if that!) then buy a CZ or a moissanite piece and donate the difference to stop the atrocities that are happening anywhere that diamonds are mined. Only then will your money be well spent.

For more information on Blood Diamonds and to read detailed reports of the atrocities, go to:
1. 10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Buy a Diamond
2. A report by Amnesty International
3. This crime library
4. This expose of DeBeers
5. Blood Diamonds Still Sold by U.S. Retailers
6. Dying for a Diamond? Unfortunately thousands of children are too.
7. This article discusses how diamonds actually lose value and how it's almost impossible to re-sell them at a fraction of their purchase price. It also discusses the DeBeers strategy to psychologically cause women to buy into diamonds are a girl's best friend. This one is a must read.

And there is much more if you simply want to research it all on Google.