By Pavan Kulkarni
THE Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has filed criminal cases against Apple, accusing the US-based global tech giant of fueling the war against the country’s eastern region by using in its products what have been deemed “blood minerals”.
“Year after year, Apple has sold technology made with minerals sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by grave violations of human rights,” maintains Robert Amsterdam, founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP.
The Washington DC-based law firm was retained by DRC’s government late last year to investigate supply chains for illegally extracted and siphoned minerals from Congo, especially the 3T. Tin, tungsten, and tantalum are critical for electronics, automotive and aerospace industries.
Of the 32 smelters and refiners listed by Apple as its suppliers of tantalum in its report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for 2023, at least nine source the mineral from Rwanda. But “Rwanda’s production of key 3T minerals is near zero,” the law firm said in a report it published in April 2024, titled “Blood Minerals – The Laundering of DRC’s 3T Minerals by Rwanda and Private Entities”.
Tantalum is a rare earth metal extracted from coltan, 64% of whose global deposit is in the DRC. Most of it is concentrated in Rubaya, a mining town in North Kivu province which produces over 15% of the global supply of Tantalum. By the end of April, it was taken over by the Rwandan army-backed militia, the M23.
Since then, the M23 has been generating USD 300,000 in monthly revenue from Rubaya’s coltan mines, Bintou Keita, head of the UN mission in Congo, told the Security Council on September 30.
Wracked by the decades-long conflict that has displaced over 7 million people, there are reportedly over a hundred armed groups fighting to capitalize on the mineral-rich eastern region of the country along the border with Rwanda. M23, one of the most powerful and notorious of these armed groups, began the current offensive to control the mineral wealth in Kivu provinces in late 2021.
In 2022, Rwanda sold a billion-dollar worth of 3T minerals and gold, collectively known as 3TG, despite having little deposits in its own territory.
By June of that year, UN experts reported that the M23 and the Rwandan army had together taken control of all the main routes for the transport of these minerals, including the roads to Rwanda and Uganda.
Big Tech assertion of clean supply chain is “patently untrue”
Apple’s human rights and sustainability efforts manager had been informed by whistleblowers that smelters and refiners in its supply chain were sourcing tantalum from Rwanda’s Minerals Supply Africa (MSA), a company known to be laundering large quantities of the mineral smuggled from DRC.
On September 27, the launch day of iPhone 16, protests against Apple’s sourcing of minerals extracted from areas controlled by armed groups in the DRC were held outside Apple stores in several cities globally. These included England’s capital London and other British cities including Bristol, Reading and Cardiff, Netherlands’ capital Amsterdam, Belgium’s capital Brussels, Japan’s capital Tokyo, Canada’s Montreal, South Africa’s Cape Town, and Mexico City.
On December 16, DRC’s lawyers filed a lawsuit against Apple in France, followed by another in Belgium on December 17.
A global mechanism to launder DRC’s blood minerals across the supply chains?
The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative (ITSCI) is among the main providers of the “third-party audit programs” Apple has been citing to back its assertion that its supply chains are not contaminated by ‘blood minerals’.
Set up by the industry giants in 2009, the OECD authenticated ITSCI as fully aligned with its own due diligence guidelines in 2018. By tagging sealed bags of minerals going from mines to smelters, ITSCI claims to have put in place a system of traceability.
On the one hand, this is supposed to ensure that only minerals mined from the government-approved areas of the DRC are certified by ITSCI. On the other, it is meant to guarantee that 3T minerals exported from Rwanda have not been smuggled in from the DRC by armed groups.
UN experts have also shown that the minerals extracted from areas under the control of armed groups have entered the ITSCI-certified supply chain year after year. In 2022, the Responsible Minerals Initiative (RMI), of which Apple is a member, also removed ITSCI from its list of reliable monitors of conflict minerals. Nevertheless, Apple continued citing ITSCI, including in its 2023 SEC filing.
The allegations reportedly include covering up war crimes, laundering smuggled minerals, forgery and deceptive practices to convince its consumers that its products are free of conflict minerals.
“We strongly dispute these claims,” Apple said in a statement issued on December 21.
Pointing out that these claims about the changes Apple has made to its supply chain need to be verified on the ground, DRC’s lawyers have said they will continue to pursue the cases filed against the company.
EU’s deal with Rwanda is also stained with Congolese blood
The lawyers also wrote to European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyen to inform her of the cases and to call on her to open a dialogue on the accountability of the European Union (EU).
Earlier this year on February 19, as Rwanda was consolidating control over the mining areas of DRC’s North Kivu and the cross-border transport routes from the mines in this region to Rwanda, the EU entered into an agreement with the country “to nurture sustainable and resilient value chains for critical raw materials.”
It described Rwanda as “a major player on the world’s tantalum extraction.
Rwanda “doesn’t even have a gram of these so-called ‘critical’ minerals in its subsoil”, retorted DRC’s president Tshisekedi.
Condemning the agreement with Rwanda as a “provocation of very, very bad taste”, he said that the EU was encouraging the looting of DRC by Rwanda.
Europe too will be tainted by the same allegation if Rwanda is to be held accountable.
This is an edited version of the article originally published in https://peoplesdispatch.org/
** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.