"Cobalt Red": Smartphones & Electric Cars Rely on Toxic Mineral Mined in Congo by Children

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman with nurmish Sheikh the end Today's Show looking at how the world's increasing Reliance on Cobalt for mobile phones electric cars has had a devastating impact on the Congo Cobalt is a key component in Lithium-ion rechargeable batteries nearly three quarters of the world's Supply is mined in the Congo under horrific conditions Siddharth Cara documents the human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo in his new book Cobalt read how the blood of the Congo Powers our lives in it he writes quote there are many episodes in the history of the Congo that are bloodier than what's happening in the mining sector today but none of these episodes ever involved so much suffering for so much profit links so indispensably to the lives of billions of people around the world Cara continues to spend a short time watching the filth cake Children of the katanga region scrounge at the Earth for Cobalt and you'd be unable to determine whether they were working for the benefit of Leopold or a tech company that's sadath Kara writing in Cobalt red how the blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives his previous books sex trafficking inside the business of modern slavery won the 2010 Frederick Douglass book prize awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition Siddharth Kara welcome to democracy now it's great to have you with us from London this book is absolutely devastating but of course it's describing that reality on the ground in Congo tell us the story of how you came to focus on this and how Cobalt links the devastation of the Congo to the West well thank you so much for inviting me to speak with you about this crucial and very urgent matter um I had been doing research on various forms of slavery and child labor around the world for many many years uh starting in the year 2000 and around 2016 I heard from some colleagues in the field about very appalling conditions in the mining of cobalt in the Dr Congo and I had no idea what Cobalt was I thought it was a color I I didn't know that it was in rechargeable batteries uh so it took me a little time to to organize my first trip establish ground relationships I got into the Congo the first time in 2018 and what I saw was just uh so um horrific uh so extreme and severe and the fact that it was at the bottom of Supply chains that reach out like a kraken across the global economy and touch the lives of everyone everyone listening to us right now cannot function for 24 hours without Cobalt and as you noted in your remarks roughly three-fourths of the world's Supply comes from the Congo and its mind and conditions you you uh read the bit uh the sentence that links to Leopold its mind in conditions that are like the colonial times where the people of Africa are reduced to brute labor their lives are not valued their labor is not valued their humanity is not valued and that's the reality uh that exists at the bottom of cobalt Supply chains I mean the book is just uh magnificent and as Amy said it's it's completely devastating so if you could explain to us you know for people myself included when I read the book the difference between artisanal Mining and the conditions that exist on artisanal Minds areas where where uh artisanal miners search for for Cobalt and Industrial Mining and then describe some of the conditions who are these minors how many children are involved and how big are these Minds you've said some of them are as large as European cities including London yeah so let's spend a moment and just understand what's happening on the ground in that part of the Congo and this is the Southeastern part um from the towns between lubumbashi and kolawesi and when you get down to that part of the Congo uh there are massive industrial mining operations on the one hand and now outside of the Congo consumer facing Tech and EV companies will have you believe that all of their Cobalt Supply in their batteries for their gadgets and cars comes only from these industrial mines industrial means what it sounds like a heavy machinery excavators digging and gouging at the Earth uh what's happened there is uh not sustainable at all in terms of industrial activity millions of trees clear-cut massive destruction and contamination of the environment now alongside that and the reality is inside of these industrial operations there are hundreds of thousands of people including tens of thousands of children who dig by hand now the quaint term given to them is artisanal minus and that makes you think that they're walking around baking bread or doing work in pleasing conditions but nothing could be further from the truth artisanal mining means these tens of thousands of children hundreds of thousands of people scrounging at the ground with pickaxes shovels stretches of rebar or their bare hands to pull Cobalt out of the ground and feed it up the chain many of these people are digging inside industrial mines and outside of the Congo Tech and navy companies will have you believe that that does not happen but the truth on the ground is very different they also dig all around the countryside because Cobalt is everywhere there are more reserves of cobalt in that part of the Congo than the rest of the planet combined so the local population has been displaced by enormous mining operations you made note that some of these are as big as cities well these mining concessions concessions means the territory of foreign mining company is allowed to exploit the biggest one in that part of the Congo is the size of London where I'm sitting right now so imagine a london-sized swath of Countryside that's been completely gouged destroyed clear-cut and contaminated in this scramble to get cobalt out of the ground and up the chain and imagine the hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in that territory forcibly displaced now without home without a way to live and all they can do is scramble back into that ground try to dig some Cobalt out of the earth and feed it up the chain for a dollar or two a day I want to turn to a clip from a 2017 Sky News special report on child minors in the DRC Cobalt mines when I wake up every morning I feel terrible knowing I have to come back here again everything hurts when I'm working here I'm suffering my mother she's already dead and I have to work all day and my head hurts me and this is a clip from a documentary produced by Australians uh Broadcasting Corporation last year and a film titled blood Cobalt the Congo's dangerous and deadly green energy Minds artisanal Miner Mama Natalie explains why she works in the mines accompanied by her two children I come to the mind to hustle if I am lucky I make some money and I buy food for the kids but if I don't they go to sleep hungry we collect dirt the kids help by packing it up and washing it they also sort through it looking for minerals it's not a good life for children we just don't have any other options so Siddharth Cara as we hear these voices of the people who are actually digging for the Cobalt what about the responsibility of the corporations names we know so well whether we're talking about Apple or well you name the names and then talk about what they how they explain this level of exploitation certainly not something you could see in the children of California doing well by and large these consumer-facing Tech and EV companies look the other way and these are the big names we're all familiar with apple Tesla Google Microsoft Samsung I mean you can go down the list they all buy some most or all of their Cobalt from the Congo because there's no other Cobalt to buy quite frankly they're all aware to some degree I'm sure of the conditions on the ground and and by and large they simply offer PR statements that their supply chains are audited that they're certified that they protect and preserve the human rights of every participant in their supply chain that they have zero tolerance policies on child labor that mining is done sustainably so you as a consumer you as a shareholder don't worry about it but the truth the truth that the Congolese people have to share is completely different they are at the bottom of the supply chain with no alternative but to eke out this base scrounging hazardous miserable existence for a dollar or two a day feeding think Cobalt up the chain to these Behemoth Tech and EV companies as your clip mentioned the mother said there's no other alternative there these people have been displaced and pushed to a Cliff's Edge if they want to eat they have to put their lives at risk to dig Cobalt out of the ground and it's part of the scramble you see there is so much demand especially being driven by this transition to electric vehicles there is so much demand for Cobalt that mining companies can't get it out of the ground quickly enough well if you have hundreds of thousands of grindingly poor people there digging it out of the ground it's a penny wage way of boosting production to try and meet demand and your listeners and viewers should understand Cobalt is toxic it's toxic to touch it's toxic to breathe so I have seen thousands of women with babies strapped to their backs inhaling toxic Cobalt dust day in and day out 10 year old children caked in toxic filth X exposing themselves to toxic Cobalt and the ore that these children are digging that has Cobalt in it often has traces of radioactive uranium so the public health catastrophe on top of the human rights violence on top of the environmental destruction is unlike anything we've ever seen in the modern context and the fact that it is linked to companies worth trillions and that our lives depend on this enormous violence has to be dealt with and so that you point out I'll just read out a short a quote of yours because you mentioned uh what these miners are paid so you write the most fortunate tunnel diggers in casulo earn around three thousand dollars per year the most fortunate by way of comparison the CEOs of the technology and car companies that buy the Cobalt mind from kasuro earn three thousand dollars in an hour and they do so without having to put their lives at risk each day that they go to work so if you could um explain I mean first of all talk as you said seven or eight dollars is the maximum a day that people earn what do these children get these four five six seven year old children and countless teenagers yes well you see the riches that are uh enjoyed at the top of the chain they're stacked to the sky on top of the the narrow beleaguered shoulders of the children of the Congo so start with a family unit um uh man and and uh teenage boys with some strength they might be digging tunnels in in a neighborhood like casulo that you just mentioned which is uh in kuluese ground zero for Cobalt mining uh they dig shafts down into the ground up to 100 feet deep to try to find slightly higher grades of Cobalt Ore think of it like Purity so that instead of earning a dollar or two or three maybe they'll earn four or five or six well they're crouched in darkness they don't have room to sit up as they work for 18 hours at a time Underground and those tunnels often collapse bearing alive everyone inside uh on the ground you'll have younger children and maybe mothers digging in pits and trenches that could be a few meters deep they will gather sacks of dirt and stone and fill them up and take them over to putrid rinsing pools where young children little boys and girls will use a sieve to try to separate dirt and Stone from Cobalt bearing or they go through this process throughout an entire day to fill one sack for which the family might get two or three or four dollars from the buyers the Chinese buyers who then sell it to formal industrial mining companies so at the bottom end children could be earning 50 cents to a dollar for rinsing and sieving and sorting and at the best on the best day uh tunnel digging males and teenage boys might earn five or six or seven dollars but putting their lives at risk for a potentially horrid demise each and every day so can you talk about the responsibility of the Congolese government of China of the United States well ultimately what is what needs to happen is the companies at the top of the chain have to accept responsibility for the conditions at the bottom of their Cobalt Supply Chains It's that lack of accountability uh the lack of accepting responsibility for the conditions of Labor of the Congolese people and the environmental destruction that leads to a host of other ills so every actor in the supply chain from Chinese mining companies to the Congolese government they're all parts of a chain that starts at the top and there are Bad actors at every level the Congolese government of course has its role to play in not adequately and equitably allocating mining revenues to the population there there's corruption and graft of course which plagues the country of the Congo uh but China it dominates and controls mining production on the ground and what I've seen with my own eyes and what any Congolese person living in the katanga region will tell you is they pay no heed to the human rights of the Khan Congolese people and they pay no heed to the environment to Environmental Protection uh mining companies especially the Chinese ones dump toxic effluence in the Earth the air the water I have seen villages with children playing in the dirt covered in sulfuric acid powder that is wafting over the entire Countryside from mineral processing plants at Chinese mining companies and as I've mentioned a few times millions of trees have been clear-cut and I never met anyone in the Congo who said they saw anyone planting one tree to replace them the waterways lakes and rivers have also been polluted so fish stocks are polluted animal stocks are polluted vegetables are polluted everyone there is being slowly poisoned to death by Cobalt mining operations that's the truth that the stakeholders at the top of the chain don't want us to know but that's the truth the Congolese people are desperate to share Sadat could you explain you talked about how is it that China came to play such a huge role in the Cobalt mining industry owning and financing as many of the mines 15 out of the 19 major industrial copper Coba mining complexes in the main Cobalt producing provinces that you visited how has China come to play this role and then talk about the Depots the bosses that you spoke to it was very difficult to get into the Depots they all have armed guards and so on what did those the the Chinese bosses of these Depots tell you about the conditions there what they're doing there and did they take any responsibility at all for the conditions under which these miners were working well in a way we you have to give China credit 15 plus years ago they saw that the future was going to be rechargeable batteries and that meant Cobalt and they shrewdly determined uh all the Cobalts in the Congo and starting in 2009 with the previous administration of President Joseph kabila they started signing deals and the first one they signed in 2009 was a six billion dollar loan and infrastructure deal in exchange for access to several copper Cobalt mines in the Congo and that opened the door that opened the floodgates and then it was one state-run Chinese Mining Company after another signing deals with the kabila administration and before the West knew what was happening China had locked down the bottom of the Cobalt supply chain and from that point forward they vertically integrated it they control probably 70 to 80 percent of mining production on the ground in the Congo last year they supplied about 80 percent of the world's supply of refined Cobalt and probably half of the world's supply of chargeable batteries for phones laptops and cars but how does this artisanal Cobalt the child mine Cobalt enter into that formal supply chain well there's an informal ecosystem that exists right next to the formal supply chain uh and imagine it like this you have hundreds of thousands of people digging uh all around that part of the countryside filling up sacks of cobalt and they take it to these Depots or they're also called buying houses and most of them are run by Chinese agents and their job is to buy up artisanal Cobalt and sell it straight to Industrial mining companies and so you can just sit outside and they advertise with these pink tarps they'll say copper Cobalt Depot one million dollar Depot a dollar sign Depot and so artisanal miners uh sell their Cobalt to these to these buying houses and at the end of the day you see huge cargo trucks from the industrial mines uh pull up and buy up all these sacks hundreds and hundreds of sacks so tons of cobalt being purchased and they take them right into the industrial mine where it's then mixed with the industrial production and from that point forward this is very important for people to understand from that point forward there is no way to disaggregate which Cobalt was pulled out of the ground by an excavator and which Cobalt was pulled out of the ground by hands of a child and any company that claims otherwise is either recklessly ignorant of the truth on the ground or they're dealing in falsehood so we're talking to Siddharth Cara who is author of cobalt red you end your book quoting the last letter of Patrice lumumba to his wife Patrice lumumba the Congolese independence leader first prime minister who was assassinated in 1961. the U.S went after him this specifically the CIA Belgium talk about this quote when you write Patrice lumumba offered a fleeting chance at a different fate but the neocolonial Machinery of the West chopped him down and replaced him with someone who would keep their riches flowing and that was the long time decades-long dictator mobutus has a second long supported by the United States well let's go back to the moment of independence in 1960 uh in the Dr Congo and 17 countries in Africa uh got independence from their colonial powers that year um Congo was coming out of centuries of the slave trade and then Belgian colonialism Patrice lumumba was a very bold popular nationalist leader he was elected in the country's first Democratic elections to be their first president prime minister and he had a bold Vision that the Congo's mineral wealth its Rich resources and the Congo is blessed with enormous riches and resources his vision was that those resources should be for the benefit of the Congolese people and not foreign powers well 11 days after Independence Belgium amputated the part of the Congo that we're talking about right now katanga where all the mineral resources are and that was 80 percent of the country's economy at Independence so 11 days the country had 11 days of Freedom before the before Belgium went in and amputated the most important part of the country well lumumba asked the United Nations for help expelling the belgians uh they did not uh cooperate so then he turned towards the Soviet Union and asked their help in in expelling the belgians from his country well the thought that the Congo's mineral riches would flow towards the Soviet Union and not continue flowing to the West sent those neocolonial Powers into a tailspin and they hatched a plan very quickly uh to dispatch a blue Mumba the U.S Belgium the CIA they're all involved in capturing La Mumba uh they flew him to the Belgian stronghold uh in katanga tortured him shot him chopped him to pieces dissolved his body and acid ground his bones to dust so no Trace could ever be found except for one tooth that was held as a souvenir by one of the Belgian assassins and in fact that tooth was just returned by Belgium to lumumba's descendants last year so the lesson was the lesson was unless you play ball with the West we'll chop you down and replace you with someone who will and as you noted that person ended up being Joseph Mobutu for three decades a corrupt bloodthirsty a despot and kleptocrat who ran the Congo into the ground and so the Congo really never had a chance it's just been one set of corrupt leadership after another but they had their chance at freedom and maybe a completely different path with lumumba after Independence but sadly um the the colonial Powers uh had other plans so that if we could go back to the stories in fact that you heard while you were in the Congo what's in fact become of the place you interview many minors and families of minors in the book could you tell us a couple of those stories the story for example of LOD or lubel just tell us what they told you who they are yeah uh you know LOD uh is a young girl I met on my first uh trip to the Congo uh she was 15 years old an orphan she was digging in an area uh called uh Lake mallow which is uh near a village called kapata in the kolawesi area and she'd been orphaned by Cobalt mining her father she reported died in a tunnel collapse inside an industrial mine right next to where she was digging when I met her and her mother died from some infection or illness she wasn't sure but her mother was someone who rinsed Cobalt stones in the very toxic Waters at Lake Malo uh and LOD was an orphan on her own and there are thousands of children who have been orphaned by Cobalt Mining and they scramble and scratch for Cobalt and in her case she couldn't make ends meet she had to prostitute herself as a teenager to try to get money to survive when when I met her it was it was pretty clear to me she was in the later stages of HIV she had a two-month-old son strapped to her back she was wiry mucus crusted very very ill and what I saw in her was the face of what the global economy was doing to the Congo um it's almost impossible to imagine that um this the degradation of this child and children like her can be transformed by the global economy into shiny phones and cars but that's exactly what's happened and she was sort of the the quintessence of this story the complete degradation of Congolese children children thrown to a pack of wolves by a global economy that transformed their their degradation their suffering uh into the the indispensable gadgets and cars that we rely on every day and and that's that's an injustice that's a that's a an utterly caustic miserable formula that needs to be set right because we can't conduct our rechargeable economy in our daily lives uh by inflicting sex much violence and suffering on some of the poorest children in the world Siddharth Cara We want to thank you so much for being with us author of the new book Cobalt red how the blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives his previous book sex trafficking inside the business of modern slavery won the 2010 Frederick Douglass book prize awarded for the best book written in English on slavery or abolition that does it for our show democracy Now produced with Mike Berk Renee feldstein Augusta Messiah Rhodes Maria tarasena Tammy were enough Trina nadura Sam alkoff I'm Amy Goodman with nermeen Sheikh

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

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Length: 26min 26sec (1586 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023