Blood Coltan

Economic Slavery 4 comments

Virtually all consumer electronics such as cell phones, DVD players, video games systems, and computers contain coltan. Coltan is known as a “conflict mineral”, mined from all over the world. But in the Congo, the mining of this mineral has resulted in unmitigated war, leading to slave labor, widespread rape, and mass murder. Corporations continue to buy coltan from distributors who knowingly purchase from Congolese dealers.

The local chiefs agree to meet us but they refuse to be filmed. Many of these men have international warrants for their arrest. They call these Rwandan rebel the Interahamwe. These are the people who committed the Rwandan genocide in 1994. 800,000 Tutsis were massacred by Hutu militias. When the situation was revered, tens of thousands of Hutus had to cross the Congolese boarder for fear of being massacred by the Tutsis. Among them were militia men of the former Rwandan regime, and the soldiers who had carried out the genocide. An army in full flight crossed into Congo with their weapons and supplies. These are the people we’re meeting today. We’re carrying a hidden microphone.

If the big brands are so sure of themselves, they must supply the evidence that their mobiles are not helping make the conflicts worse. They must supply evidence that they’re not sourcing their minerals from the conflict zones. In oyr conversations with company bosses, they have never been able to show evidence that effective controls are in place.

Blood coltan still exists. I’m holding a mobile phone. And I know that the microprocessor it contains uses coltan. And if this coltan has been obtained at the massacre of 10 or 20 villagers through slave labor, the suffering of children forced to work in the mines by the armed militia. This is immoral. All this violence, all this blood, to get your hands on precious materials that our lord implanted in our Earth.

Conspiracies related to this article:coltan, Congo, Rwanda
  • Mark Golding

    It is typical of Christian groups to express their faith in God in the context of Old Testament warrior Leaders & Kings. The historical narrative of a militant Christianity (of the Jesuit Soldier/Politican persona) is all too familiar and it differs little from the historical narrative of militant Islam since both come under the powerful spell of some dubious texts containing references to God as a Warrior God, that have been frozen in time by generations of imbecilic theologians and scholars who hand down the idea of it being holy without ever trying to understand the reality that as a canon it was the source of inspiration behind the justification for the murder of Jesus Christ.
    I was shocked to see this rebel leader in one hand fly a banner bearing the name of Jesus and in another bear arms to bring so called ‘Christian’ justice to tribal rivalry. It was even more shocking to see another poster referring to Jesus as the inspiration for capitalistic success being proudly displayed by a business man engaged in dealing in coltan that he knew was giving credibility to the rebels as a legitimate Christian militia protecting the mining industry from competing neighbours.
    Perhaps the most insane addition to the quagmire of portraying God as a defender of a particular tribe or culture is the fact that the entire African continent has been systematically exploited by mission based Western colonialism for centuries which has seen a deliberate and ill-conceived unfolding of a plan by the industrial elite of various European empirical households to keep African countries permanently locked into existing as raw material economies for the sole benefit of providing cheap materials for the fast expanding creative industrial economies of the all powerful West – inc China – a glorified Corporatised factory.
    It is quite understandable, in view of the bigger picture of economic subjugation of this kind, for people to rebel against those they believe are taking advantage of their relatively undeveloped political infrastructure but it is frustrating to see how they are being manipulated by international corporate cartels virtually run by officers of Western States belonging to ‘Trusts’ and ‘Institutions’ where the chain of command acts like a parallel universe existing alongside the world of Government business that is sadly portrayed rather superficially by the BBC and other mainstream media outlets as a legitimate force for public good being ‘representative of the publics sovereign will’.
    References:
    Deception by Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark
    Flath Earth News by Nick Davis
    The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein
    Web of Deceit by Mark Curtis
    Descent into Chaos by Ahmed Rashid
    Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky
    The New Rulers of the World by John Pilger
    When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten
    Rothschilds by Derek Wilson
    How Rich Countries got Rich and Why Poor Countries stay Poor by Erik Reinart
    Globalisation of Poverty by Chossudovsky
    96 Reasons Why Jesus does not belong with the Old Testament by Mark Golding

  • cassandra

    Amen Mr Golding. Religion has been used to rule the mases by fear to missinform people by putting words in God’s mouth…and in so doing they justify their sordid actions.

  • me

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan the majority of it comes from australia….

  • pfff

    you dummy. when you read a graph, you have to look all the way across. The majority of it came from aus in 1990. in 2009 by far the majority of coltan comes from the DRC. Please read closer before you spread misinformation

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