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Blood on our handhelds
Blood in the Mobile
Directed by Frank Piasecki Poulsen (2010)
93 mins
Distributed by Dogwoof Pictures – UK release: 21 October
Reviewed by Manny Thain
WORLDWIDE, EVERY other person has a mobile phone,
statistically speaking. One in three of those phones is a Nokia. Each
one contains tin (from cassiterite ores) and tantalum (from coltan).
Much of this is mined in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of
Congo. Here, at least five million people have been killed and 300,000
women raped over 15 years of seemingly intractable civil war, and
warlords control the mineral-rich land – the blood in the mobile.
Frank Piasecki Poulsen, the director and reporter of
this remarkable documentary, traces the journey. He is quietly
determined and begins at a mobile phone trade fair in Barcelona. For
companies which deal with communication, Poulsen finds it almost
impossible to find anyone who will talk to him. "We only have one
number", says a representative from Nokia, a company which boasts of its
social responsibility.
Poulsen goes from Barcelona to a United Nations (UN)
base in Goma, DR Congo. This is where the UN has its highest
concentration of troops anywhere in the world, although they rarely
leave the towns and hardly ever get off the main roads. The expanses of
forests are controlled by a dizzying array of heavily armed militias
headed by local warlords or from neighbouring states, and rogue army
units.
A UN press officer who is not permitted to speak on
record about the mining operations describes the brutal, terrorising
tactics of the militias, a stark warning to Poulsen to be extremely
careful.
After meeting up with a 16-year-old miner called
Chance (Luck, in French), Poulsen and a small team make their way to the
mining area, Bisie. They pass people carrying 50kg sacks of minerals on
their backs through the forest. Thirty tons a day are transported in
this way, $70 million-worth of rocks a year. To get into the mining camp
they have to pay a ‘tax’. People have to pay to get in and again to get
out, so many are trapped because they cannot afford to leave.
Poulsen takes us through this sprawling tent city
where 15-20,000 people survive in the mud and filth. Holes pepper the
mountain where claustrophobic pits are dug in a haphazard fashion. One
day the whole mountainside is likely to collapse, the consequences
almost too horrific to contemplate. Because of the distances to travel
to get to the cassiterite, Chance says that he would often stay
underground for a week at a time. It is gruelling, hammering solid rock
with cut-off sledge-hammers, jostling for position at the rock face.
They earn $1 to $5 a day.
From central Africa, the minerals go to be smelted,
mostly in east Asia. Once they are smelted it is impossible to trace
where they have come from. Poulsen asks a Nokia representative about the
possibility of publishing supply chain data. He is told that it is
difficult to do. There are confidentiality issues, matters of
sensitivity, the need to ensure innovations are not leaked to
competitors. Poulsen says that, of course he agrees that there is a need
for the company to defend its interests in order to make a profit. The
Nokia rep enthusiastically concurs. So, Poulsen asks, what about the
child labourers, the raped women, the millions dead? Is it OK to
sacrifice them for profit?
In the 19th century, the so-called Congo Free State
was founded and privately owned by king Leopold II of Belgium. He
brutally suppressed and enslaved the indigenous peoples. He forced them
to work on the rubber plantations to provide the raw materials for the
explosion in demand for tyres for motorcars and other vehicles, and
thousands of other products. Millions perished.
In today’s equally misnamed Democratic Republic,
this task has been contracted out, effectively, to local warlords.
Governments and CEOs of resource-hungry countries and corporations
actively promote or, at best, wilfully ignore the resultant suffering of
the working class and poor who provide their profits. In the case of the
mining of cassiterite and coltan, every mobile phone and electronics
company, without exception, is involved in this bloody business. |