On Thursday, officials from the Democratic Republic of Congo ( DRC ) issued an order threatening legal action unless Apple stops using allegedly illegally exported minerals from the DRC’s conflict zones and smuggled through Rwanda.
Apple allegedly” sold technology made with materials sourced from a region whose population is being devastated by serious human rights transgressions,” according to Agence France-Presse ( AFP), which reviewed the cease-and-desist letter prepared by French doctors working for the Congolese government. Those transgressions include” physical violence, military assaults and widespread problem”.
According to the notice,” Apple sells smartphones, Mac servers, and other products to its customers around the world through supply stores that are too opaque and stained by the Congolese people’s blood.“
On September 22, 2023, users in Palo Alto, California, line up to purchase the newly released phone 15 and another Apple items. ( Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty )
The DRC’s attorneys alleged that Apple has continuously relied on a number of distributors to purchase materials from Rwanda, a mineral-rich nation that has plunderered its natural sources for nearly three decades.
” Apple seems to rely primarily on the monitoring of its vendors and their determination to regard Apple’s code of conduct”, they said, strongly suggesting Apple’s trust is misplaced.
The European law firm Amsterdam &, Partners issued a statement accusing the world’s technology sector of purposefully blinding itself to human rights violations because it requires essential vitamins at affordable prices after writing the letter to Apple.
” The country’s eyes are wide opened: Rwanda’s creation of major 3T minerals is near zero, and but big tech companies say their materials are sourced in Rwanda”, they said.  ,
The “3T” minerals are tantalum, tin, and tungsten, all of which are vital to electronics manufacturing. Another common abbreviation is 3TG, which refers to tantalum, tin, and gold.
The DRC suspects Apple is using tin, tungsten, titanium, and gold extracted from its mineral- rich but conflict- wracked Great Lakes region. Despite having some of the richest mineral deposits in the world, the eastern Congo also has M23.
Artisanal miners collect gravel from the Lukushi river searching for cassiterite, an ore of tin, on February 17, 2022 in Manono, the Democratic Republic of Congo. ( JUNIOR KANNAH/AFP via Getty )
The current name for a violent extremist movement that dates back to the Rwandan genocide of the middle of the 1990s is M23, also known as the” March 23 Movement.” The Tutsis, the ethnic group that was brutally murdered in Rwanda by their tribal rivals, the Hutus, were largely the foundation of the movement. Due to the horror in Rwanda, the Congo’s tutsis became easy targets for a number of extremist leaders.
After a few quiet years, the long-running insurrection in the eastern Congo resurrected in 2016 under the new name Mouvement du 23 Mars, a name intended to make fun of a 2009 peace agreement that was supposed to put an end to their rebellion. The insurrectionists began to seize entire villages and engage in fierce combat with the DRC government, which claimed Rwanda supported the rebels in a bid to seize control of the country and seize control of the country, particularly the one with all those valuable mines.
After responding to Democratic Republic of Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s request to join the army and fight the M23 rebellion ( March 23 Movement ) in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo, on November 14, 2022, hundreds of volunteers board a plane to take them to a training facility. ( Guerchom Ndebo / AFP ) ( Photo by GUERCHOM NDEBO/AFP via Getty )
Unquestionably, Rwanda participated in the establishment of M23 under the leadership of M23 under President Paul Kagame, an ethnic Tutsi and accused war criminal, who seized power in 2000 and continues to rule Rwanda to this day. According to the U.N. Security Council, Rwanda occasionally sends troops to battle alongside the M23 rebels.
The M23 rebels ‘ brutal slaughter is renowned, and their insurrection has made eastern Congo one of the worst humanitarian disasters ever to occur. The United Nations warned in March that as M23″ significant advances” and displacement of thousands of civilians in the eastern DRC, both the security and humanitarian situation have become steadily worse. M23 is now referred to as a” Rwanda-backed” organization by the U.S. State Department, and there are growing concerns that Rwandan and DRC ties could turn into a full-fledged war.
Rwanda asserts that in the eastern Congo because the DRC military has been ensnared by a different terrorist organization known as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda ( FDLR ), it was forced to intervene. The United States government recognizes FDLR as a real threat, but strongly disapproves of Rwanda supporting M23 as a countermeasure.
The DRC’s claims against Apple for using “blood minerals” were stifled by this bloody stew. The DRC believes that minerals are being smuggled across the border into Rwanda, smuggled into the conflict zone, and then pumped into the global supply chain. The profits from this trade are allegedly helping to finance the M23 insurrection.
” In Congo, people have been dying for 30 years as a result of illegal mining. We want to know more about the sources of supply for major technology companies, particularly Apple, to find out if they are purchasing minerals produced in completely illegal ways, according to DRC spokesman Patrick Muyaya on Thursday.
A nonprofit organization called Global Witness, which Apple claimed to have taken “few meaningful mitigation measures” to stop using smuggled minerals, was quoted in the letter from DRC lawyers to Apple.
The Global Witness report noted the enormous demand for 3T minerals by the world’s electronics sector and claimed that the Great Lakes region is essentially a giant “laundromat” for dirty money and blood minerals.
Making the situation even worse, Global Witness found many of the eastern Congo’s mines are under the control of “abusive militias” that employ child labor, among their other human rights violations.
The International Tin Supply Chain Initiative ( ITSCI), an organization established by mineral trade organizations to ensure minerals are not harvested using child labor or from conflict zones, received a lot of criticism in the 2022 report. The DRC’s attorneys echoed criticisms in their letter to Apple that the ITSCI is too lax with its enforcement and lacks confidence in weakened governments like those in Rwanda.
In the DRC letter, Apple was promised a new report on the “laundering” of Congo minerals through Rwanda would be published around that time and that Apple would respond to questioning questions about its mineral supply chain within three weeks. Tesla, Intel, and Samsung are among the electronics companies that Tesla, Intel, and Samsung have contacts with in the DRC.
Apple responded that it conducts “due diligence” in its mineral supply chain and that there is” no reasonable basis for the determination that any of the 3TG refiners, whether directly or indirectly, financed or benefited armed groups in the DRC or an adjacent country, as of December 31, 2023.”
