Seems there's more reportage on this story than I expected. The 'black gold' of coltan, that mineral you've probably never heard of, and never knew was in minute, micro-engineered quantities in your mobile has come a long way on a chain of war, child labour, smuggling and global corporate silence and shame.
As Labour MP Oona King put it to an Independent journalist in May 2006: "Kids in Congo are being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms."
The links below spell out the story, armed with killer facts, lot more eloquently than I ever could;
http://greatreporter.com/mambo/content/view/1322/2/
http://www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/Africa/Articles/TheStandardColtan.asp
http://www.ethiscore.org/info.aspx?info=reports/full/mobilephones
What do we do? Give up the mobiles? Or buy more ethically, ask more questions, I quite like Ethiscores suggestion of labelling along the lines of 'Dolphin friendly tuna.' Wonder how long it will be before Phones4U are offering 'child labour free mobiles.'
1 comment:
Hi Gavin,
Can't believe you are keeping this up (I know - only a few days in...!). Interesting and distressing stuff about the mobile phones. Happier to read that you were stomping around with Malawian and dubious Scottish folk artistes. We will make a luvvie of you yet....
By the way - I can give you a help with those html tags if you like!
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