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Blood in the Mobile
By Rosie Perera | October 14, 2011 at 4:35 am
I saw a challenging documentary yesterday as part of VIFF (Vancouver International Film Festival). Blood in the Mobile is the story of Danish director Frank Piasecki Poulsen’s quest to find out the truth behind the so-called “blood minerals” mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He had heard that the mining of coltan (columbite–tantalite), used in the manufacture of mobile phones and other electronic devices, is fueling the war in the Congo. He wanted to find out whether this was true, whether his mobile phone company (Nokia) was knowingly using “blood minerals,” and whether they were doing anything to change it.
He starts out by trying to get in touch with someone at Nokia who might know something about this, but is given the run around for a couple of weeks. So he finally decides to go down to the Congo and find out for himself. Putting himself at great personal risk, pushing through all kinds of red tape at various levels of government and military, and paying bribes, he finally manages to talk with some people who know what is going on and are willing to tell him about it, though very few will talk on camera, and they tell him to be very careful as “anything can happen.” He is eventually able to visit one of the mines, at Bisie, guided by a 16-year-old boy who used to work there. Frank confirms his suspicions and finds out things are even worse than he’d heard. The militias are indeed financing their war on the backs of the village people (including many children) who are working in the dangerous mines. More than 5 million have died in the conflict over the past 15 years, and 300,000 women have been raped.
Frank returns to Nokia armed with his new knowledge. Though he does get to meet with people who admit Nokia is aware of the problem this time, the impression he leaves with is that they can’t — or rather won’t — do much to change it because “it’s complicated” and ultimately it would cut into their profits. He also talks to activists who are working to make consumers aware of the issues in the Congo and pressure companies to make their products with “conflict-free minerals.”
Here’s an article with some more information about the history of the problem: Coltan and conflict in the DRC
And here’s a video: In Focus: Congo’s Bloody Coltan
As a follow-up, I found this hopeful article posted in Forbes just a couple of days ago which appears to indicate that some change is coming: Anticipating New SEC Rules, Tech Companies Shift To Conflict-Free Metals
Of course all situations like this are complex, and if companies pull out of Congo and get their coltan elsewhere and the mining business collapses, there go the livelihoods of so many thousands of laborers.
What are we in the West in our comfortable lives with our addictions to our BlackBerrys and iPhones to do with this knowledge? Well, perhaps not upgrade to the latest greatest right away if you’ve already got a cell phone. It is of course the demand for these products that drives the price of the minerals used in them up, which is what makes access to them worth fighting over. Here is a case where understanding more about the processes used in producing our tech tools (instead of keeping them hidden behind the opaque “device paradigm” as Albert Borgmann calls it) can help us to be more responsible consumers. This is what is happening all over the place in the food realm, so why not expand that to our digital technologies?
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