UNREPORTED WORLD

Congo: The Real Mobile Phone Wars

25 minutes

 

00:06: We were in the Congo, long after sunset, trapped between warring armies

00:14 Suddenly gunmen lined the banks of the road.

They were searching us for something more precious than diamonds. A metallic ore called coltan.

Juliana PTC: The militia or soldiers or somebody was checking all the passing vehicles to see if people were taking coltan illegally out of the mining area.

00:378 Coltan. Immensely valuable, because from coltan comes a metal used in every mobile phone on the planet.

 

This is the story of the hidden cost of the global boom in mobile phones.

TITLE: The Real Mobile Phone War

My journey began in Uganda.

A team of hostage negotiators had agreed to take us into Congo. They hoped to free some Thai workers kidnapped by one of the warring factions

As insurance Francois Lumumba, the son of a former leader of Congo, was coming along.

01:32 Trouble was a rival faction controlled the airstrip we were heading for.

01:39 Sure enough, the leader of that group, Jean Pierre Bemba called to threaten that his troops would kill us.

 

ACTUALITY.

Juliana PTC: That really feels a bit scarey now. We’ve just had a threat from one of the war lords and we haven’t got permission to land. So there have been phone calls back and forth

ACTUALITY: No he will call me.

 

 

02:10 The team called contacts in the Ugandan government with links to Bemba.

ACTUALITY: He needs to understand not to interfere

02:20 Then they decided to gamble

ACTUALITY Don’t forget us now. You pray for us. OK let’s go.

02:30 We left Uganda and climbed over Lake Victoria.

We were heading for a country that doesn’t exist except in atlases.

02:44 On the ground, the Democratic Republic of Congo is the fragmented fiefdom of half a dozen war lords and their armies.

02:55 In three years, three million people have died coltan is adding to that toll.

03:14 At the air strip we concealed our camera.

The team’s phone calls had worked. Our welcome was cold but polite.

03:26 They looked like customs officials, but they were security agents of the warlord Bemba.

03:42 We passed their front line positions. For our benefit a brief cease fire had been agreed.

03:51 Soon we arrived in the area controlled by the rival faction, the Mayi Mayi.

They’d taken the Thai workers prisoner in a dispute over col tan.

 

For the Mayi Mayi the arrival of the hostage negotiators was a victory. The Thai company that employed the hostages was exporting the ore and the Mayi Mayi hadn’t liked that.

PTC: This is the first time Francois Lumumba has come to this region. And these people celebrate him as a nationalist and hero.

04:26 Back in the sixties Francois’ father, Patrice Lumumba, was the Congo’s first and only elected leader. He accused foreigners of exploiting the country’s wealth. He was murdered.

04:56 As we drove on, child soldiers began to line our route.

05:03 With the rocketing demand for mobiles the Mayi Mayi have joined the scramble for Col Tan mines. Now they can afford modern weapons.

05:35 The eighteen hostages were lucky to be alive.

5:49

I knew the Mayi Mayi usually killed prisoners. They rip out their hearts and put their heads on stakes.

6 02

The base commander told the hostages to carry back a warning to foreigners.

 

PTC: ----He was saying that they were fed up with all these foreigners taking all their natural resources and nothing coming to the use of Congolese people so they felt they needed to take the hostages to make this point.

6:21 Francoise Lumumba sealed the deal to release them.

6:32 After dark the hostages were led off to freedom.

6:43 But the sense of victory was short lived. Soldiers brought news that Bemba’s forces were attacking some mines held by the Mayi Mayi

 

PTC: The atmosphere in the camp is pretty tense. The negotiators have left and the hostages have left We have decided to stay behind because somebody told us there’s a col tan somewhere nearby and we’re hoping to be able to go there tomorrow.

7:15 By dawn most Mayi Mayi soldiers had gone to positions in the hills around. But the rumours of an imminent attack subsided.

I asked soldiers, ‘How often are col tan mines the cause of fighting?’ They told me to speak to Commander Ndungo.

7:38 The commander said his men were protecting a network of mines. He said we could even visit one.

So there are even some col tan mines near but it’s a days’ walk to get there and you can also go with a motorcycle

[No comm]

So there is a possibility maybe for us to arrive there

8:09 Within minutes everything changed. Bemba’s forces were attacking. And they were nearby.

PTC: Well we’ve just decided to leave because these are the last cars going out of the camp. But with the contacts that we’ve made we are hoping to be able to return.

8:27 But the base was overrun twelve hours later.

8:34 We headed for a nearby town, Butembo.

8:43 On the edge of town I had an appointment to keep with a local journalist I’d met in the Mayi Mayi camp. He asked us not to use his name.

9:00 Butemba was the centre of the local col tan trade, he explained. And these houses had been destroyed days before in fighting between Bemba and the Mayi Mayi. He gave me a video.

[Video]

9:22 He said Col Tan was Congo’s curse

9:48 It was clear that col tan dominated this town. .

 

Despite the fighting, hundreds of miners were in from the forests to sell to trading posts.

 

10:15 I met Magazin Paluku Kupika, a miner. He is 32, with a wife and five children. Like many others he left farming during the coltan boom to become a miner. But it hasn’t made him rich.

10:37 Magazin took me to his home..

.

10:44 When it comes to coltan he said, it’s the warlords who make the big money. Their control started at the bottom.

SYNC – There is actually a system where he has to buy some sort of identification to be a coltan digger. You buy a permit that costs 16 us dollars. But to be a coltan seller you have to obtain a permit that costs 300 US dollars. Which is obviously a lot of money for local people here.

PTC: I’m on my way to see a very, very rich local businessman called Bayoli who is said to export more coltan from Butembo than all the other exporters combined. And he’s got the most plush-looking, hi-tech office that you could possibly find in town.

11:47 Not surprising. He’s got a contract to sell col tan to Germany.

11:54 Bayoli makes a fortune. But the warlords take ten per cent of his profits.

12:04 I want the war to end he told me. The trouble is, I’m forced to help finance it.

 

SYNC - There actually is a campaign in Europe that is saying there’s blood on your mobile talking about the political situation here. I was wondering what he thinks about it and he says well that’s very justified campaign because really there is blood on a mobile in the sense that so much of the coltan doesn’t help people here but fuels the war.

12:47 And the global demand for mobile phones may have another cost.

Since the coltan boom began Doctor Jean Paul Mundama has noticed a significant increase in babies born with disabilities.

13:00 This is Wenge Kahambu and her new born baby, Kilembe.

Dr Mundama believes that her condition may be linked to the fact that col tan is radioactive.

SYNC: The doctor seems to think that there’s a connection between deformities and the fact that her husband is a coltan transporter who stores lots of coltan in the hut and they use the same vessels in the house for storing their flour and their foodstuffs that they use for coltan and this has been going on throughout the period that she was heavily pregnant.

13:47 Nearby we met Kasema , who’s 2 ½ years old and suffers from spina bifida . Both Kasema’s parents work with coltan. Its known that this condition can occur if pregnant mothers are exposed to radioactivity.

14 16

Doctor Mundama told me he hopes one day other researchers will investigate his suspicions.

14:33 We called the Mayi mayi commander by satellite phone. There was a col tan mine near Mangulajipe we could visit.

PTC: - Trying to get a car to go to Mangulujipa has been so unbelievably difficult people are so worried about bandits and security along the road but in the end we are feeling quite optimistic now.

14:55 We shouldn’t have been.

PTC/ Sync: Wow, I think we should get out of here, I just spoken to Ndungo the Mayi Mayi commander we met in the camp. He says the Mayi Mayi, the various Mayi Mayi are fighting each other 14 km outside Butembo he says we should clear out it’s looking pretty bad over there.

SYNC – That was a really close call I think. And not first one on this trip

15:46 The message was clear: where there’s coltan, there’s bloodshed

15:56 Back in Butembo there’d been a coup within the Ugandan backed faction controlling the town. Bemba the warlord was gone. We were invited to meet the man who’d overthrown him.

His bodyguards were nervous.

16:28 Mbusa Nyamwizi the new man said he didn’t know anything about col tan or the money that came from it. He was a politician not a businessman. I asked him about a recent United Nations report that had reached a different conclusion.

SYNC – I wanted to how come that the President has been named as one of the key people who’ve been involved with the Ugandan military in exploiting the mineral riches of Congo and he is saying he is not even a businessman and this whole affair has been totally exaggerated. He himself says that he has been named in the UN report for having embezzled 10 million $ and he says that’s an outright and complete lie.

17:21 I persisted. After all the UN had called for a criminal investigation into his affairs.

Actuality:

JR: But of course they’ll loose their time, they waste their time if they investigate anything he says. No business no anything – nothing to hide?

MN: Even this house is not mine its from my family.

JR: Your family?

MN: … Yes …

17:51 We made a final attempt to see a mine. A faction backed by the Rwandan government controlled some mines to the south west of Butembo. With dusk approaching we were hours from the nearest safe village.

18:19 It was about eight o’clock in the evening.

Patrols criss-crossed the landscape.

18:30 Suddenly soldiers lined the side of the road. We were waved down.

They thought we were coltan traders. ‘Have you paid your tax? They asked

18:47 It took a while, but we explained we were journalists.

The col tan mines were nearby.

19:06 The next day we met some miners who said they’d guide us to their mine.

We walked for an hour.

PTC – cutting steps: He’s really nice he is actually digging steps for me because it is really steep here, so we can get down.

19:33 And suddenly there it was - a col tan mine (su)

Off I go.

 

19:54 They were digging channels and using water to wash away the topsoil. Below was the col tan.

20:06 They told me a group of three miners earns around thirty dollars a day . But it was dangerous work they added. . Different factions were constantly fighting to control the mine.

SYNC - So, this is coltan …

20:30 Kinesha Biamana says he could make a decent living if it weren’t for the war.

SYNC – So he’s saying there is a lot of looting and stealing going on in this area, every time the mine isn’t supervised by soldiers or watchmen bandits come here and steal whatever they can get their hands on. And he had his coltan stolen many times not just his col tan basically any of his possessions, the area is just so insecure because everyone knows there is money to be made [summary]

21:02 They were eking out a living in the midst of a war fuelled by a mineral that the people here have absolutely no use for

SYNC – I wanted to know from him if he knows what coltan is actually used for, he had absolutely no idea, he just knows people pay a lot of money for it.

Actuality miner and JR:

21:37 It was time to make for the border with Uganda preferably before nightfall.

 

21:47 Our driver explained that our road carried shipments of coltan out of Congo, it was a magnet for violence.

PTC: The soldiers along this road sound totally out of control and they are waiting along these roads for passing traffic, and attack people in cars and motorbikes make them take of their clothes and steal everything that they can lay their hands on. And two days ago two people have actually been killed on this road.

22 23

We reached a checkpoint manned by soldiers still loyal to the deposed warlord Bemba

22:30 When they discovered we had no coltan, the atmosphere relaxed.

 

22:40 There were military camps all the way to the border.

PTC: Behind me is the Ugandan –Congolese border crossing. There is absolutely no way we could be filming with a normal camera. It’s a bit quiet today because there’s been trouble along the road. This is also the single largest exit point of coltan out of Congo.

23:15 The customs officials said lorries full of coltan rolled past day and night. Their commanders and the Ugandan military across the border were making a fortune.

PTC: It’s unbelievable, even at night when the border is officially closed the soldiers because they are soldiers and commanders, they can just crossas they want.

23:37 And then I left Congo.

23:38 My last image a lorry the customs men believed was full of Coltan.

23:44 Truly a mineral to die for.