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.

80% of the world’s coltan, a mineral vital to cell phones and wireless devices, comes from Eastern Congo, where a civil war has claimed 4 million lives over the past decade.

The places where coltan was found were occupied by the negative “Mai Mai” forces. They imposed themselves in the mines, watched over the miners and even managed their work. Who profited from this system during the war? It was the dignitaries, the commanders, the lords of war… They profited greatly.