| Publicity: | Are mobile phones the new blood diamond? Is our insatiable appetite for the latest electronic gadgets actually fuelling despair, deprivation and oppression in another part of the world, even threatening the survival of central Africa’s magnificent gorillas? |
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| From the poorest African village to the blazing neon lights of our big city electronic stores – the deadly connection is coltan. |
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| Coltan is a simple ore with remarkable powers -- refined and applied to the insides of many devices like mobile phones, laptops and gaming consoles it can store enduring electrical charges. It’s used as a capacitor allowing devices to become ever smaller, more complex, more versatile and more fun. |
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| Conversely for the people struggling to survive the horrors of the DRC, coltan is a curse. |
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| The mineral is found in abundance in this resource rich swathe of Africa but many of the mines are controlled by violent militia groups and they fund their fighting by controlling the extraction of coltan and other minerals, and taking a fat slice of the sales. |
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| Reporter Eric Campbell journeys to the heart of the war zone in the Congo to investigate the link between the demand for gadgets and a seemingly endless - and certainly brutal - African war. He visits mines where gunmen demand half the money earned by miners - many of them children - with no other way to make a living. |
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| Foreign Correspondent also shines a light on the conflict’s other victims -- the Congo’s endangered gorillas. |
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| Mountain and eastern lowland gorillas, immortalised in the film ‘Gorillas in the Mist’, are in even greater peril as rebel militias set up mines in their rainforest habitat. Some of these imposing apes have even been killed by gunmen and miners for meat. Elephants, hippopotamuses and chimpanzees have also met a similar fate. |
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| Claims of blood minerals have sent electronics giants like Apple and Sony into damage control, claiming they don’t use coltan from the Congo. |
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| The only other country with large reserves of the mineral is Australia, where it’s called tantalum. But the Western Australian mine, Talison has closed down, claiming it can’t compete with cheap African exports. So are consumers funding a war we know next to nothing about and how can the electronics giants really guarantee their products are Congo coltan-free? |
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| Sunrise over lake | Music | 00:00 | |
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| CAMPBELL: It’s dawn on Lake Kivu in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We’re heading to a national park that is also a war zone. | 00:05 | |
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| Music | 00:15 | |
| Car drives past gorilla sign | Kahuzi-Biega is one of the last strongholds of Africa’s endangered gorillas, | 00:21 | |
| Gorilla rangers drill | but the rangers who once led tourists here are under siege. Every morning they drill against possible armed attacks. | 00:30 | |
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| Right now there are rebel fighters all through the park, | 00:46 | |
| Campbell to camera | but there’s been a lull in the fighting which should allow us to go in today to see some of the gorillas who’ve survived this human conflict. | 00:48 | |
| Walking through jungle | Music | 01:00 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Finally we get the all clear and head into the forest. | 01:04 | |
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| It is home to one of the richest eco systems in Africa. For more than a decade it’s also been the base for thousands of gun-toting rebels. | 01:13 | |
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| They have slaughtered the wildlife and terrorised the local people. Only the courage and dedication of these rangers have kept the gorilla population alive. | 01:25 | |
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| Music | 01:36 | |
| Gorilla family | CAMPBELL: Just an hour after leaving the road, we come across our first great ape, an adult male silverback. | 01:45 | |
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| Music | 01:51 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Nearby, we find his extended brood. Against the odds, they’ve survived, but their numbers are dwindling. More than two-thirds of these gorillas have been wiped out since the war began. Even as they feed, they hear the sounds of war. Military planes fly overhead supplying troops fighting the rebels. | 02:00 | |
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| This is quite amazing to be seeing these animals in the wild. | 02:35 | |
| PTC Campbell in front of gorilla SUPER: Eric Campbell | They show no fear of humans, but of course they should because unbelievably the rebels have been killing these and other animals for food and selling the orphans as pets. And it’s quite sobering to think that even in a tiny way, each and every one of us could be contributing to the war that’s killing them. | 02:38 | |
| Gorilla/ iPhone on ground/ gorilla game | Music | 02:59 | |
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| CAMPBELL: We live in a world of electronic gadgets. Whether it’s the latest iPhone, laptop or Play Station – they all depend on a miraculous mineral known here as coltan. | 03:08 | |
| iPhones | It’s a simple ore that can store vast electrical charges, allowing computers and other devices to become ever smaller and more complex. | 03:27 | |
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| And in the Congo, coltan and other minerals have fuelled a terrible war that most Western consumers have never even heard of. | 03:44 | |
| Jason’s car on road | JASON STEARNS: “At one point in the war, coltan, which is this mine we’re going to today, was the main source | 03:57 | |
| Jason and Campbell in car | of profit for rebel groups in the eastern Congo, particularly in 2000 and 2001 there was an enormous boom in the market due to a perfect storm of factors including the issuing of a new Sony Play Station and many other things.” | 04:03 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Jason Stearns has spent the past eight years investigating the war. His reports for groups like the United Nations paint a devastating picture of blood minerals – armed groups extorting money from miners to fund their fighting. | 04:16 | |
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| “You can basically imagine the Eastern Congo | 04:33 | |
| Super: JASON STEARNS: Author & Congo analyst | JASON STEARNS: as a shifting patter of various mafia, such mafia like organisations, which the largest one of them would be the Congolese state itself which some people compare to a very large syndicate or racket itself.” | 04:35 | |
| Congo scenery | Music | 04:47 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Any trip in the Congo is long, arduous and dangerous. In our journey we’ll try to find out if our demand for gadgets is prolonging the war. But just a warning -- | 04:53 | |
| Campbell to camera | in this story we’re going to show you some quite confronting images. If you’re not comfortable with that you might like to switch over to something lighter on a different station, just bear in mind even that remote control contains coltan. | 05:07 | |
| African Queen clip |
| with President Mobutu, who has been a faithful friend to the United States for some twenty years.” | 06:24 |
| Archival. Mobutu | CAMPBELL: Mobutu held onto power for 32 years, while the country fell apart around him. | 06:30 | |
| Archival. Rwanda conflict | Music | 06:38 | |
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| CAMPBELL: It collapsed completely after the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda, when ethnic Hutus tried to wipe out the Tutsi minority. | 06:41 | |
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| JASON STEARNS: “You had almost close to a million people massacred and then a million refugees streamed across the border into the Eastern Congo, along with the people who had committed the genocide. Those refugees and those people then destabilised this country and sparked a regional war where you had Rwanda but other countries in the region invading the Congo.” | 06:57 | |
| Soldiers on motorbikes | Music | 07:20 | |
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| CAMPBELL: More than a decade on, a series of vicious armed groups continue to operate here, living off the minerals and other resources in the territory they seized. | 07:23 | |
| Armed soldiers | JASON STEARNS: “It was like they got their hand stuck in the cookie jar. They got a liking for the other things they found in the Congo.” | 07:33 | |
| Village children | CAMPBELL: And they used civilians as bargaining chips. | 07:40 | |
| CU Lock |
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| Campbell leaves house with Dr Gamba | What you are about to see is hard to watch, but it’s the true face of what’s going on here. | 07:51 | |
| Françoise having her burns treated |
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| This woman is Françoise Kavira. Rebels attacked her village in one of the frequent turf wars for mineral-rich territory. They set fire to more than 250 houses. | 08:08 | |
| Alice in hospital bed. Dr Gamba with Campbell | Alice Yalala, who’s 24, lost her children as well. DR CHANTAL GAMBA: “This lady was in her home… the rebels arrived, closed the door, and set the place on fire. She can’t tell you how she found herself outside. Her two children died in the fire.” | 08:24 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Dr Chantal Gamba runs a hospital for the aid group Medicins Sans Frontiers. | 08:53 | |
| Medicins Sans Frontiers hospital | State hospitals have almost ceased to function. Every day she deals with the casualties of war, lives destroyed, families torn apart, children suffering with adults. | 08:57 | |
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| DR CHANTAL GAMBA: “This is an 8 month old child admitted a week ago suffering from diarrhoea, vomiting and dehydration. But when you look at the child, clinically he presents as a child suffering from malnutrition.” | 09:10 | |
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| CAMPBELL: So how can people be so destitute in a region that should be wealthy? | 09:28 | |
| Hills of Eastern Congo | The hills of Eastern Congo have some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, not just coltan, but vast reserves of diamonds, tin or in the case of this area, gold. | 09:34 | |
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| Music | 09:48 | |
| Campbell on path into mine | CAMPBELL: Like coltan, gold is used in almost all electronic devices, mainly as a non-corrosive conductor. But you won’t find anything hi-tech here. It’s a long walk across a treeless landscape in searing heat. Everything has to be carried in or out by foot. | 09:56 | |
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| Music | 10:17 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Hundreds work in primitive and dangerous conditions. Many are children. | 10:31 | |
| Children working in mine |
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| The mine used to be run by a Tutsi militia controlled by the Rwandan Government. In a recent peace deal it was merged with the Congolese Army, but as far as exploitation goes, it’s business as usual. | 10:45 | |
| Mine shots | Music | 10:58 | |
| Soldiers at mine | CAMPBELL: We found it guarded by government soldiers living off the proceeds. We had to pay them to be allowed to film. The miners have to pay them just to work here. | 11:08 | |
| Mine shots | JASON STEARNS: “They operate as rackets, they offer protection to diggers, like the diggers of the coltan mine. And if they don’t get a payback, there’s always the threat of violence.” | 1123 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Even though they give half of what they make to the soldiers, it’s the only way most have to make a living. | 11:34 | |
| Campbell to camera | So here’s the thing. Just about all these small mines have to pay off the government, whether it’s the militias or the Congolese Army, but the war has so ravaged the local economy that there’s really no choice. If you shut down all these mines, many of these people would just starve, including the children. | 11:43 | |
| Farmland | Music | 12:02 | |
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| CAMPBELL: This eastern region used to be the country’s food bowl. Now, many live on the brink of famine. | 12:14 | |
| Villagers/ Jason | JASON STEARNS: [To villagers travelling] Okay, good journey! See you next time. You’ll come and say hello, won’t you? Good journey.” | 12:21 | |
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| CAMPBELL: On our way to the coltan mine with Jason Stearns, we meet a group of villagers who tell us the gunmen don’t just take the minerals they dig, they also take the food they grow. | 12:29 | |
| Stearns with villagers | MALE VILLAGER: “When we go to sell our beans at the market soldiers take most of them, and we go back with nothing.” JASON STEARNS: “Do you mean the soldiers take everything?” MALE VILLAGER: “Yes, really.” JASON STEARNS: “And the locals stay poor?” MALE VILLAGER: “All the buckets are empty.” | 12:40 | |
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| FEMALE VILLAGER: “We have children but no food, and the government only pretends to help us!” | 13:00 | |
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| CAMPBELL: While Jason Stearns has helped expose the people’s plight, it’s made him an enemy of those in power. | 13:08 | |
| Child/ Travelling to mine | Music | 13:14 | |
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| CAMPBELL: When we reach the coltan mine, we’re ordered to put our camera away. | 13:25 | |
| Hidden camera footage at mine | With a hidden camera, we can show why. SECURITY AT MINE: “Wait a minute, I’m going to speak to the Senator.” CAMPBELL: It turns out the mind is owned by a Congolese senator. Even though we have all | 13:30 | |
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| the government documents allowing us to come here, he refuses to let us enter. | 13:43 | |
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| SECURITY AT MINE: [On phone to Senator] “Yes, Boss. I’ve stopped them. There are four white men who have authorisation from Kinshasa.” | 13:48 | |
| Long shots of mine | Music | 14:00 | |
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| CAMPBELL: From a distance, we manage to sneak a glimpse of the mine at work. It’s clearly not going at full steam. The price of coltan crashed a few years ago and it’s been hit again by the global financial crisis. What’s more, electronics giants like Apple claim they’re taking steps to ensure they don’t use coltan from this area, but Jason Stearns believes that’s a PR claim, that can’t be justified. | 14:04 | |
| Jason Stearns and Campbell in car. Super: | JASON STEARNS “I think as long as you have militias in the Eastern Congo taxing these mines, they will find a way of getting these minerals onto the international market. They’ll smuggle them onto the market, they sell them to countries like Malaysia, Thailand, to China who do not have the same sort of focus on due diligence and transparency as countries like Australia and the United States may have.” | 14:33 | |
| Coltan workshop | CAMPBELL: Off camera, local exporters insisted they don’t sell coltan overseas any more, due to all the controversy. But it didn’t take us long to find a busy coltan trader. | 14:52 | |
| Watuta in workshop | Mr Innocent Watuta buys it directly from the miners and sells it to those same local exporters. He says he’s still trading coltan, but making a lot less money these days and has little idea of where it ends up. | 15:11 | |
| Watuta and Campbell | MR WATUTA: “We just heard that it’s used for mobile phones – or maybe computers, I don’t know. “ | 15:28 | |
| CU Coltan | CAMPBELL: Australia is the only other country to have large reserves of coltan, known in Australia as Tantalite, but the Australian mine has stopped working claiming it can’t compete with cheap African exports. | 15:37 | |
| Watuta and Campbell | CAMPBELL: “As you know, there’s a movement in the West not to buy coltan from Africa. What do you think of this?” | 15:50 | |
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| MR WATUTA: “We think that it’s another way - another possibility - of penalising Africans in particular, but especially South Kivu and the Congo. We have difficulties and I think if there was a small injection of money in this activity in the mining sector, it would be enough – instead of continually giving us aid – continually giving us aid that leads us nowhere. You people outside say coltan this, or coltan that, but what is the truth? I don’t think that’s the point. Our life depends on this.” | 16:01 | |
| Mine | JASON STEARNS: “I mean coltan does feed the rebels and it does fuel conflict or enable conflict. It also feeds three hundred, four hundred thousand people who are just petty traders, who are digging in the pits. So we don’t want to, we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.” | 16:41 | |
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| CAMPBELL: “So what do you say to people who might be watching this thinking should I get an iPhone, should I get a Play Station?’ JASON STEARNS: “I think that | 16:56 | |
| Stearns. Super: | there’s very little that can be done at the moment to prevent people from buying iPhones and Play Stations. I think that if you really want to get rid of conflict in the Eastern Congo, I think it’s going to be the government’s job to do so.” | 17:01 | |
| Sunset | Music | 17:12 | |
| IDP camp | CAMPBELL: This year alone more than a million people have been displaced by the fighting. They seek refuge at camps like this next to a UN base in North Kivu. More than five million people have died since the fighting began, mostly from disease and starvation - the biggest number in a single conflict since the Second World War. | 17:20 | |
| Marie Rubu | MARIE RUBU: “How can I go home? I don’t have a house. It’s been destroyed. If I go back I’ll be living in the bush.” CAMPBELL: Marie Rubu and her family of six have been living in this tent since February, when rebels destroyed her village. | 17:42 | |
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| MARIE RUBU: “Before the war I lived in my house. I kept cows, chickens and goats. I had 50 square metres. They looted everything, and I ended up with nothing.” | 17:56 | |
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| CAMPBELL: “The DRC is a very rich country. It has so many minerals. Why is everybody here so poor?” MARIE RUBU: “Do we know where this wealth goes? Do we know who eats this wealth? Do we eat it?” | 18:09 | |
| Campbell with camp children. Shows iPhone | CAMPBELL: [To group of children in camp] “Now I’m going to show you something extraordinary. It’s the iPhone.” | 18:19 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Given that they’ve never seen the proceeds of the mineral riches, it seemed only fair they should see what their minerals can do. | 18:26 | |
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| There’s no reason why people here shouldn’t be enjoying the benefits of the area’s vast resources, but for more than a century the riches have been pillaged by a small minority. | 18:39 | |
| Camp shots | JASON STEARNS: “One of the constitutions of the Congolese Republic under Mobutu had 14 articles and Mobutu said Article number 15 is ‘fend for yourselves’ and that has become sort of a doctrine for many Congolese. Fend for yourselves. Is it wrong that I steal? I have to do it. I have to survive.” | 18:55 | |
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| Music | 19:11 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Ordinary people now survive from sheer ingenuity. Too poor to buy transport, they build bikes entirely from wood. When they move house, they literally move house. Such resourcefulness is necessary because the government exists in name only. | 19:17 | |
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| The State employs officials, but often doesn’t pay them. They demand bribes, without providing services. Even security, such as there is, comes courtesy of the international community. | 19:42 | |
| UN Peacekeepers | The United Nations has its largest peacekeeping force in the Democratic Republic of Congo. | 19:58 | |
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| Music | 20:05 | |
| School | CAMPBELL: It not only shelters refugees, it provides them with basic services like schools. The State has simply abandoned them. | 20:15 | |
| UN Soldiers load truck | The UN also supports the Congolese Army, even supplying them with food. That’s controversial, given the role many Congolese soldiers play in attacking their own people. | 20:38 | |
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| Music | 20:51 | |
| Women at hospital | CAMPBELL: And the UN hasn’t been able to protect women from the most common crime of all – mass rape. Chantal Gamba’s hospital has become a gathering point for its victims. The measure of the madness here is what passes for improvement. | 20:57 | |
| Dr Gamba | DR CHANTAL GAMBA: “There was a period when about 50 women who had been raped arrived each week. Each week there were 50 victims. Today we see an average of 20 women per week.” CAMPBELL: “20 per week? That’s a lot.” DR CHANTAL GAMBA: “Yes, but compared to 50, 20 is better.” | 21:14 | |
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| CAMPBELL: “How do you explain this degree of violence?” | 21:35 | |
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| DR CHANTAL GAMBA: “It is a good question, but it’s very hard to answer.” | 21:39 | |
| Women and children outside hospital | Music | 21:47 | |
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| CAMPBELL: The reality is that rape is used as a weapon of war, partly to cling on to territory rich in minerals. | 21:49 | |
| Mine workers | Music | 21:58 | |
| Campbell picks up back of coltan | CAMPBELL: So where does this all leave us? Are minerals like coltan helping fund this war? Absolutely. Has coltan, or tantalum as it’s also known, from the Congo wound up in your mobile or laptop? Well it’s impossible to know. And if the world stopped buying these minerals would it end the war? Well all that’s certain is it would put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. | 22:13 | |
| Sunset over lake | Music | 22:36 | |
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| CAMPBELL: Perhaps the real question is why we need a connection with mobile phones to care about what happens here. | 22:38 | |
| Gorillas in jungle | Music | 22:44 | |
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| CAMPBELL: So let’s end this story where we began. It says much about our Western sensibilities that the plight of gorillas has done more to raise awareness of the war than the plight of people. | 22:47 | |
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| Zoos have begun asking consumers to recycle their mobile phones to help save the Great Apes. And it is all connected. People won’t be safe until these animals are too. All are in danger from the same militias. | 23:03 | |
| IDP Camp | But the suffering will only end when the government makes peace with the warring parties. | 23:25 | |
| Campbell takes photo of children | And that will only happen when a world connected by gadgets, remembers the most important connection of all. | 23:32 | |
| Photos of children | JASON STEARNS: “The real challenge for people around the world is to recognise that we do have a shared humanity and whether they’re black or white or whatever colour skin they may have and wherever they live, life is worth a life.” | 23:45 | |
| Credits: | Reporter: Eric Campbell Camera: Brett Ramsay ACS Editor: Andrew Barnes Producer: Marianne Leitch | 24:01 |