![]() ![]() There were also deaths because the pits were deep and there was flooding,” said Mburano. At the time there were no rules, and sometimes miners died of fatigue. “Sometimes people worked 24 hours out of 24, night and day, using head-mounted lamps - one team working days and one doing nights. SEE: CBS News finds children mining cobalt for batteries in the Congo But after an armed militia seized control of the mine in 2008, working conditions descended into what Mburano describes as “slavery.” ![]() At the mine he worked alongside about 15,000 others, digging for the mineral cassiterite and panning for gold in a nearby river. Mburano’s story reflects the misery that war and mineral wealth has brought to the DRC. Photographs by Fiona Lloyd-Davies ( supported by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting) | Additional reporting by Toby Wolpe ‘There were no rules’ SEE: Photos: The dangerous work of conflict mineral mining in the Congo Inside many of these electronic devices are components that began life as minerals dug at gunpoint from mines in the DRC. The money that helped prolong the suffering of Mburano and his countrymen flowed from the likes of you, me, and just about anyone else who bought a PC, phone, or electronic gadget in recent memory. ![]() The armed groups saw themselves as outside the law - no one could control them.”Īxel Mutia Mburano is describing life in a mine in the Walikale region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a central African country gripped by conflicts that have killed more than 5.4 million people since 1998. The rich mineral mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo supply valuable minerals to the tech industry, but they come at a deadly cost that is finally being faced. How conflict minerals funded a war that killed millions, and why tech giants are finally cleaning up their act ![]()
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