Cell Phones and Slavery

[Chinyre]

Congo, Democratic Republic: Cell phones, forest destruction and death

Could anyone imagine that cell phones are tainted with the blood of 3.2
million deaths since 1998? Also, that the same thing happens with some
children's video games? And that mega-technologies contribute to forest
depredation and spoliation of the rich natural resources of
paradoxically impoverished peoples?

In the case of these new high techs, it is Coltan that is at stake
--the minerals columbium and tantalite, or Coltan for short. Tantalite is a
rare, hard and dense metal, very resistant to corrosion and high
temperatures and is an excellent electricity and heat conductor. It is used
in the microchips of cell phone batteries to prolong duration of the
charge, making this business flourish. Provisions for 2004 foresee sales
of 1,000 million units. To these properties are added that its
extraction does not entail heavy costs --it is obtained by digging in the mud--
and that it is easily sold, enabling the companies involved in the
business to obtain juicy dividends.

Even though Coltan is extracted in Brazil, Thailand and much of it from
Australia --the prime producer of Coltan on a world level-- it is in
Africa where 80% of the world reserves are to be found. Within this
continent, the Democratic Republic of Congo concentrates over 80% of the
deposits, where 10,000 miners toil daily in the province of Kivu (eastern
Congo), a territory that has been occupied since 1998 by the armies of
Rwanda and Uganda. A series of companies has been set up in the zone,
associated to large transnational capital, local governments and
military forces (both state and "guerrilla") in a dispute over the control of
the region for the extraction of Coltan and other minerals. The United
Nations has not hesitated to state that this strategic mineral is
funding a war that the former United States Secretary of State, Madeleine
Albright called "the first African world war" (and we understand by world
wars, those in which the great powers share out the world), and !
is one of its causes.

In August 1998, the Congolese Union for Democracy (Rassemblement
Congolais pour la Démocratie-RCD), launched a rebellion in the city of Goma,
supported by the Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA). Since then, in a struggle
in which, behind the myth of ethnic rivalries, are hidden the old
colonial powers that continue to ransack the wealth of post-Colonial Africa,
the war has been rife between two, loosely defined parties. On the one
hand the RDC and the Governments of Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the
United States, relying on the military bases such as that built in
Rwanda by the United States company Brown & Root, a branch of Halliburton,
where Rwandese forces are trained and logistic support is provided to
their troops in the DRC, together with United States combat helicopters
and spy satellites. The other party is made up of the Democratic
Republic of Congo (led by one of Kabila's sons, after his father was
assassinated by the Rwandese), Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe.

However, behind these states are the companies sharing out the zone.
Various joint companies have been set up for this purpose, the most
important one being SOMIGL (the Great Lakes Mining Company), a joint company
set up in November 2000, involving Africom, Premeco, Cogecom and
Cogear, (the latter two are Belgium companies --it should be remembered that
DRC, formerly the Belgium Congo, was a Belgium colony), Masingiro GmbH
(a German company) and various other companies that ceased their
activities in January 2002 for various reasons (a drop in Coltan prices,
difficult working conditions, suspension of Coltan imports from DRC) and
are waiting for better conditions: Sogem (a Belgian company), Cabot and
Kemet (U.S.) the joint United States-German company Eagles Wings
Resources (now with headquarters in Rwanda), among others.

The transport companies belong to close family members of the
presidents of Rwanda and Uganda. In these virtually military zones, private air
companies bring in arms and take out minerals. Most of the Coltan
extracted is later refined by a small number of companies in Germany, the
United States, Kazakhstan and the Far East. The branch of Bayer, Starck
produces 50% of powdered tantalite on a world level. Dozens of companies
are linked to the traffic and elaboration of this product, with
participation of the major monopolizing companies in Belgium, Germany, the
Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. As if this were not
enough, the Trade, Development and Industry Bank, created in 1996 with
headquarters in the capital city of Rwanda, Kigali, acts as correspondent
for the CITIBANK in the zone, and handles large amounts of money from
Coltan, gold and diamond operations. Thirty-four companies import Coltan
from the Congo, among these, 27 are of western origin, mainly Belg!
ium, Dutch and German.

The Belgium air company, Sabena is one of the means of transporting the
mineral from Kigali (capital city of Rwanda) to Brussels, and
associated to American Airlines, announced last 15 June the suspension of the
service, under strong pressure from the world campaign "No blood on my
cell phone!" (or: "Pas de sang sur mon GSM"), exhorting people not to buy
cell phones containing Coltan due to its repercussion on the
prolongation of the civil war in the Congo. As a result of this campaign, the
Belgium research institute International Peace Information Service (IPIS)
produced a document in January 2002 "Supporting the War Economy in the
DRC: European Companies and the Coltan Trade," which documents the
leading role played by the companies in promoting the war through their
cooperation with the military and exhorting that the international
consideration of the Coltan trade be given priority over its local aspects.

The main zones where Coltan is extracted are located in forest zones,
such as the Ituri forest (see WRM bulletin No. 67). The entry of
military commandos and workers (many of them farmers who have been
dispossessed of their lands and resources, seeking the promise of better income),
the installation of mining camps, the construction of routes to reach
and take out the coveted mineral, all this goes to conspire against the
forest as a whole. Formerly fulfilling functions for the region and the
neighbouring peoples, the forest, once the traditional lands of the
hunting and gathering indigenous peoples, such as the Mbuti and a reserve
for gorillas and okapis --a relative of the giraffe-- the habitat of
elephants and monkeys, has become the scenario for war and depredation.

The African journalist, Kofi Akosah-Sarpong has even stated that
"Coltan in general terms is not helping the local people. In fact, it is the
curse of the Congo." He has revealed that there is evidence that this
material contaminates, pointing out its connection with congenital
deformations in babies in the mining zone, which are born with bandy legs.

Far from clean and innocent, these technologies, on which the
concentration of capitals is based and built, have acquired through their
"globalisation" their highest expression, contaminating and breaking up the
web of life in its multiple and rich manifestations. In the meanwhile,
over the tombs of the 2000 African children and farmers who die every
day in the Congo, can we absentmindedly continue to use our cell phones?

Article based on information from: "Supporting the War Economy in the
DRC: European Companies and the Coltan Trade" and "European companies
and the Coltan Trade: an Update", International Peace Information
Service, http://users.skynet.be/ipis/tnewpubsnl.htm ; "Basta de matanzas y
saqueo en el Congo", Solidarité Europe-Afrique, Belgium,
http://www2.minorisa.es/inshuti/extracto.htm ; "La fiebre del coltan:
el imperialismo continúa", Ramiro de Altube, Observatorio de Conflictos,
correo electrónico: obserflictos@yahoo.com.ar ,
http://www.nodo50.org/observatorio/coltan.htm ; "La fiebre del coltan",
Ramón Lobo, El PaÃ*s Spain, 2/09/2001,
http://www.elpais.es/suplementos/dom.../1fiebre.html; "UN
report accuses Western companies of looting Congo", Chris Talbot,
26/10/2002, http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oc...cong-o26.shtml ; "The
Trouble With Coltan", Kofi Akosah-Sarpong,
http://www.expotimes.net/issue020116/AAbusiness2.htm

[WombanAuset]

Medase Pa for this timely thread..Man...I need to get rid of my electronic leash now..wow