Coltan, Cell Phones, and Crisis in the Congo

It’s a bit long, but I think the information is worth the read.

The workshop, “Coltan, Cell Phones, and Crisis in the Congo”, was held at nine-fifteen on the Friday session of the Econvergence Conference in Portland, Oregon. It featured Casey Bush, Dan Raphael, Tom Web, Lisa Shannon, Josh Seeds, and Katherine Bell. What follows is a summation.

The workshop began with a spoken word poetry performance by poets Dan Raphael and Casey Bush. Their words cascaded over each other, creating a medley of phrases designed to emphasize the political and moral plight of the people of the Congo and the inaction by world leaders, specifically US leaders, as evidenced by, “drop the dollar”. Also of note was the phrase, “overly pandering quasi-racist statements”.

With the introductory theatre over, Casey Bush introduced himself. A poet, he and environmental reporter Josh Seeds took it upon themselves in 2007 to write an investigative report on the situation of the Congo, a war torn country rife with violence that possesses the eighth highest mineral wealth by country in the world. The focus of their article, and the talk, was the role of the cell phone manufacturers and the mining of coltan, and how this mining and exploitation of the land and people of Congo contributes to the violence in the region. Mr. Bush facilitated the discussion for the remainder of the workshop. He then turned the floor over to Seeds.

Seeds spoke about coltan and its place in the production of cell phones and modern technology in general. Coltan is a mineral containing tanegum and niobium, conductive metals essential for the operation of the wireless technology that fuels our phones and electronic devices. It lies in the eroded mountains of Congo, not very far down, which makes it relatively easy to access and cost effective. Of course, the cost is also offset by virtue of the multinationals exploiting the indigenous people and ignoring the grotesque human rights violations which have become a daily reality for many Congolese.

Seeds then addressed who, exactly, these multinational companies are. One of note is HCStark, a company with a long history of disregarding human rights in the quest for profit. HCStark and others easily ignore the consequences of their actions, driven by the obscene profits their exploitation rewards them with. An analogous literary figure is Mr. Kurtz of the novel, Heart of Darkness, whose illegal ivory trade makes him a brutal jungle demagogue with no respect for human life. A version of Kurtz is seen in Francis Ford Coppola’s epic film, Apocalypse Now. Much like both Kurtz’s, the companies profiting from the coltan mining are driven by their insatiable drive for power, trampling men, women, children and their own souls in their blind rush towards ever increasing profits.

Every cell phone and many advanced technological devices depend on the mineral coltan to operate. The mining, consistently done for years, began in true earnest with the launch of the Playstation2. The drive for coltan intensified at this time, prompting a leftist MP in the UK to remark that children in the Congo were being sent to their death in the mines so children in the West could kill imaginary enemies on their television screens.

Lisa Shannon then took the floor. Ms. Shannon is a founder and active participant in Run For Congo Women, an organization that raises funds for the women of Congo through marathon running and pledges. She began her section of the presentation by saying that coltan and mineral extraction are fueling the conflict in Congo at a far higher rate than tribal divisions or other externalities. The plight of the people of Congo is at a crisis point, and the plight of women is far worse than that of men. Ms. Shannon illustrated her point with two heart wrenching stories of violence and pain in the Congo.

Her first story was that of a woman whose life was forever altered and almost destroyed by the FTLR, the militia responsible for the Rwandan genocide. This woman, a nurse, was at home with her husband, a schoolmaster and their six children, cooking dinner, when the FTLR entered her home. They demanded to be fed. She fed them and they demanded money. She and her husband gave them all their money- a sum of one hundred and twenty dollars. They asked for more, but it was all they had. Unsatisfied, the militia members began beating her husband.

The woman let out a cry to warn her neighbors to flee their homes out of the danger the FTLR posed not only to this family, but also the community as a whole. The militia members responded first by killing her husband immediately. They then ordered her to place her foot atop a chair. They cut it off. They then cut it into six pieces and threw it in the fire. The children were each given a piece of the leg and ordered to eat. One of her children, a boy of nine, refused. They ordered him to pray. He refused. They then shot him point blank in the head, killing him.

This violence serves to illustrate the level of inhuman brutality in the Congo, the type of violence that dehumanizes the victims and perpetrators alike. We can speculate of the root causes of such horrific acts- there is certainly an argument to be made that these actions, though the responsibility of those who inflict them, are the broader result of centuries of exploitation from external forces that have created a breeding ground for extreme acts and deplorable conditions and loss of what we define as humanity. Whatever the case, the story carries such a level of horror this writer is still having difficulty wrapping his head around it.

The second story was of a woman who lost her newborn child. In Congo, the threat of the aforementioned violence is so great that when the militias are known to be in the area of a village, the people of the community run into the forest to hide. The woman in this story ran out into the forest with her husband, and within a day had borne her child. The child died due to exposure to the elements and the lack of medical care. This has happened to many people- they have lost their children in the forest for reasons that simple preventative care would have solved easily.

Of the forty-five thousand people a month dying in Congo, only two percent of these are actually violent deaths. The vast majority are from lack of preventative medical care and lack of the simple conditions essential for survival that are inaccessible to a people paralyzed by violence and on the run or in refugee camps. A definition of genocide includes the stipulation that people die who are deprived of what is necessary to live. While Congo is not a genocide- despite the fact that five million have died- the conditions are so similar there that it is no small comparison. The difference between Congo and Darfur- a real textbook genocide- is that Congo is not a systematic attempt to wipe out a people. It is a broader dehumanizing violence that carries the same consequences, but with a lack of connecting thread designed to carry out an ethnic cleansing.

One might ask, what to do? There are a number of things that could help, Ms. Shannon said. One is the mining industry could be held to an accountability standard involving transparency of their actions. With this transparency, the industry’s dubious practices of overlooking human rights would be in the open, and public relations nightmare might be enough for change to begin. Another is the Congolese military could be paid, and thus would be responsible to a standard of responsibility to their employers (assumedly the government). Ms. Shannon has taken her own action.

Run For Congo Women is an organization founded by Ms. Shannon, allied with Women for Women, which takes pledges for marathons and donates the money to Congo women. The organization has been successful, raising twenty-eight thousand dollars in its first year and four-hundred thousand in its second. This money has had an effect. Remember the woman who lost her leg. When Women for Women found her, she was a beggar. With the help and money provided by Run for Congo Women, through Women for Women, she has taken a loan built her own house, set up a brewery, and in an area where the median income is twenty dollars a month, she makes seventy. A success by any definition for this woman. Though she will never return to her home village, she is optimistic about her future and the future of her remaining children.

Mr. Bush retook the floor to offer up a number of factoids designed to link the conditions we had just heard about with the greater cell phone industry and our economy. These are as follows:
-between 1997 and 2007, cell phone sales rose by a factor of over four hundred percent
-143 million of the increase was in the US alone
-266.4 million cell phones were sold globally in the first quarter of 2007 (and this was before the launch of the iphone)
-1 in 3 US citizens hate but can’t live without cells more than any other aspect of modern life

Tom Web, a founder of Bear Magazine, was up next. Bear Magazine was the journal in which Bush and Seeds’ article was first published. It is an environmental magazine, but has an emphasis on human rights as well- to Mr. Web and his co-workers, the two issues are indistinct. Mr. Web made the point that the demands we as consumers put on the situation in Congo, due to our seemingly insatiable need for the fashionable consumption of ever prettier and more powerful phones and gadgets, is exacerbating the terrific human loss and warfare that is ravaging the Congo. All conflicts in the world are based upon the drive to acquire and the access to natural resources. The story lives on in the Congo, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

Mr. Bear said that the story by Seeds and Bush was picked up by the online magazine commondreams.org and also Z Magazine. In the two years since the publication in Bear, there has been a growing amount of stories in the mainstream press about the situation in Congo. Mr. Web reminds us that the power of words and the dissemination of information cannot be underestimated.

The presentation wrapped up with Katherine Bell, of the SEA Change Art Gallery in Portland speaking about the necessity of the intersection of art and social justice movements to get the word out. She believes in the possibility of using art to promote positive change. Though artists are not at times in tune with social justice issues, visual art emphasizes the impact factor of the issues. Ms. Bell can be reached at her blog, profanerelics.wordpress.com.

A brief question and answer period provided detail and clarification that has been used to flesh out the preceding paragraphs.