The secret behind your precious phone is causing others misery.

The exploitation of the mineral used to make your phones caused conflicts that generated about 5 to 6 million deaths over the past 20 years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is considered the bloodiest massacre since world war 2. However, not many people know about this.

Congo is in Africa and the country has the highest amount of coltan in the world. What’s coltan? Coltan is a mineral used to make phones, pc, video game consoles and electric cars. As you can see, those devices are used in our life daily, but the way they are produced doesn’t respect the most basic of human rights. 

 The country has been invaded by foreign armies, mainly composed of troops from Rwanda and Uganda, sponsored by the United States and the United Kingdom. Their principal motivation is the exploitation of Congo’s mineral resources like the coltan. Rape, murder, exploitation of minors and so many massacres, all those things are illegal but the media is not talking about it and even with the incredible amount of deaths, the world has yet to consider it as genocide. 

Those troops are murdering people in isolated villages that are near mines to “clear the passage for exploitation”. They don’t just kill them with no pity. They’re also destroying infrastructures and damaging civilians physically and psychologically. Rape has become a weapon and large-scale murders are occurring in order to displace people from resource-rich land.

And you know what? Children are illegally working in the mines! They don’t go to school like you and me and even worse, they have a lot of risk of dying because they are weaker so they can get sick easily and can be victims of dangerous accidents. They deserve to go to school and be healthy. 

One of the most insane things is that the workers there extract the coltan with their bare hands. They only use pickaxes and shovels to do their work, nothing is mechanized. “The hardest part,” explains Rujana, a man who works there, “is when you dig. It takes a lot of force and energy to get to where there is the sand in question, which is mixed with the ore. This is the hardest part, but you have to do it.”

Those innocent people are murdered because rich countries like ours want to exploit them even when they’re against it. Nobody deserves such horrible treatment as being tortured savagely, which is by the way completely against human rights. So please spread the news, because if we all do something about it, we may change the situation. Let’s save DRC (the Democratic Republic of  Congo) together and increase hope for humanity. Too many people have died and enough is enough, they deserve to live as peacefully as possible.