Sierra Leonian documentarian Sorious Samura won numerous awards for his 1999 film about his country's civil war, "Cry Freetown." Directed by Insight News Television's Ron McCullagh, the film's astonishing and repelling footage of the violence, the plight of child soldiers, rape and mutilation and other human rights violations perpetrated during that war are reflected now in the major motion picture, "Blood Diamond." There are 200,000 child soldiers today in Africa alone .

"Blood on a Stone" traces the diamonds to legitimate mining companies in the Kono region of Sierra Leone and show that living conditions are primitive, with no schools for the worker's children, no electricity for their homes, and no hospitals. Like company-employed miners, illegitimate diamond miners, who may find a diamond every two or three years, have never heard of the Kimberly Process and have no idea of the eventual value of the diamonds for which they live and die --- and they do die. The Kimberly Process is a start, but the lives of Sierra Leone's poor still receive no benefit from even the legitimate diamond industry.

The filmmakers embark on a journey to show how easy it is to smuggle stones out of Sierra Leone, and once in New York, using rough, legitimate diamonds loaned to them, find that nine out of the ten merchants they approached were willing to buy the "illicit" diamonds. Conflict diamonds continue to fund unrest in the Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and have the potential to fund not only new wars, but perpetrate human rights violations and stunt the development of African nations. According to Samura, "diamonds, secrets and death" all go together. 1 hour