but the part I want to quote is this, and I wonder how China managed to control their mineral wealth.
Just defeating Kabila in an election was a remarkable feat because the former president had enriched himself with corrupt dealings. The worst corruption was in eastern Congo (Ituri, North and South Kivu provinces) and southern Congo (Katanga province). These provinces are where foreign firms mine and export valuable minerals.
what it comes down to is that China is investing in the cobalt mining, and it's easy to bribe and let authorities steal the profit (and probably the Chinese firms will also divert some of that money).
In southeastern Congo (Lualaba province) the state-owned cobalt monopoly, Entreprise Generale du Cobalt (EGC), had been paying artisanal, or informal, cobalt miners a minimum price of $30,000 a ton for cobalt that was selling for $50,000 a ton. The government contended that unregulated minral brokers paid artisanal miners much less than $30,000 a ton. For a long time these independent miners have produced about ten percent of Congo’s Cobalt. Most of those mineral brokers work with or for Chinese companies which control an estimated 70 percent of Congo’s mineral deposits and mining industry. The Chinese state-owned CNMC (China Nonferrous Metal Mining Company Ltd.) owns huge cobalt and copper reserves in Congo.,,,
Congo is the world’s biggest cobalt producer, each year producing a growing majority of the world’s total cobalt. In 2020 Congo produced about 100,000 tons of cobalt, which was 71 percent of the world total. By 2021 industry sources estimated that Chinese companies controlled around 40 percent of Congo’s cobalt mining capacity.
Why cobalt? China is planning to take over the world with their electric cars.
it is not just exploiting the workers and stealing the profits: It is also destroying the environment and displacing people from their traditional land.
Human rights abuses are well documented
AlJazeerah reportAlJazeerah report
In the report Powering Change or Business as Usual? published on Tuesday, Amnesty International and the DRC-based organisation IBGDH, or Initiative pour la Bonne Gouvernance et les Droits Humains (Initiative for Good Governance and Human Rights), detail how the expansion of multinational mining operations has led to communities being forced from their homes and farmland.,,“Climate justice demands a just transition. Decarbonising the global economy must not lead to further human rights violations. The people of the DRC experienced significant exploitation and abuse during the colonial and post-colonial era, and their rights are still being sacrificed as the wealth around them is stripped away.”
Amnesty International report:“The forced evictions taking place as companies seek to expand industrial-scale copper and cobalt mining projects are wrecking lives and must stop now,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General.
NPR reports:How 'modern-day slavery' in the Congo powers the rechargeable battery economy
much of the DRC's cobalt is being extracted by so-called "artisanal" miners — freelance workers who do extremelyKara says the mining industry has ravaged the landscape of the DRC. Millions of trees have been cut down, the air around mines is hazy with dust and grit, and the water has been contaminated with toxic effluents from the mining processing. dangerous labor for the equivalent of just a few dollars a day.
even Joe Rogan is publicizing this atrocity:
No comments:
Post a Comment