"Blood in the Mobile", Electronics Firms Funding Brutal Congo War w Q & A

"Blood in the Mobile", about the huge electronics companies that are funding a brutal war in central Africa to boost their profits.

A hundred years after Belgium's savage colonial plunder of the Congo (recounted in King Leopold's Ghost), the hypocrisy of so-called "corporate social responsibility" is laid bare as the country's people and resources are once again being brutally exploited, this time in the name of higher profits. The spoils are rare minerals such as coltan and cassiterite — used to make cellphones, computers, and other electronics — that are financing the bloodiest conflict since World War II, as huge companies resist efforts to restrict the trade in these "blood minerals". Be advised: This tense and harrowing film is no 'talking head' documentary.

Directed by Frank Piasecki Poulsen. Post-screening Q&A with Patricia Jurewicz, founding director of the Responsible Sourcing Network. http://www.sourcingnetwork.org/

The film is co-financed by Danish, German, Finnish, Hungarian and Irish television, as well as the Danish National film board.

The film premiered in Denmark on September 1, 2010. During the making of the film Frank Piasecki Poulsen is working with communications professional and new media entrepreneur Mikkel Skov Petersen on the online campaign of the same name.

The campaign is addressing Poulsen and Petersens notion of the responsibility of the manufacturers of mobile phones on the situation in war torn eastern Congo. The project is collaborating with ngo's like Dutch-based Make It Fair and British-based Global Witness who are also engaged in changing the conduct of Western companies regarding the industrial use of minerals of unknown origin.

The cassiterite dug out in the illegal mines in North-Kivu is according to Danish corporate monitor organization Danwatch [1] primarily purchased as tin by the electronics industry after processing in East Asia.

Apart from trying to raise awareness of the issue of illegal mining and alleged lack of corporate social responsibility from the mobile phone industry, the campaign is an attempt to experiment with new ways of building an audience and create additional funding for documentary films.

The production of the film and the campaign is run in association with Danish new media company Spacesheep, founded in 2009 by Poulsen and Petersen in association with major Danish independent TV and film production company Koncern.

http://www.globalwitness.org/library/congos-mineral-trade-balance-opportunities-and-obstacles-demilitarisation


Shifts in the control of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) mines have created opportunities to begin breaking the links between the mineral trade and the conflict that has plagued civilians for over a decade. This report uses recent field research by Global Witness to highlight some significant changes and outline what the key players must do to capitalise on them. It says that while much of eastern Congo’s mineral trade remains under armed control, the departure of armed groups from Bisie - the region’s largest tin mine - is a promising development.