AMD Changes “Congo” Name In Response To Letter

The open letter I published here and on Daily Kos last week convinced computer chip giant AMD Corporation to change a product code name, according to an online report on technology site CNET News. I had complained about the company’s recent decision to name a new computer chip “Congo” because of the connection between conflict minerals used in electronic devices and the brutal war in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the letter, I pointed out that nearly six million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1998 and the death toll continues to mount as fighting over the country’s mineral resources continues. Currently, more than a million Congolese have been driven from their homes and farms by the fighting in the Eastern provinces. It is estimated that 250,000 women have been brutally raped and mutilated by armed groups seeking to control communities where mines are located.

While use of the term “Congo” was certainly inadvertent and many, especially in the tech world, felt I was making a mountain out of a mole hill, the company recognized that the code name was ill-chosen. Here’s what they told CNET News reporter Elinor Mills:

Contacted for comment this week, AMD spokesman John Taylor said the company “truly regrets” causing any offense, even unintentionally. “It was an oversight not to see that (the code name) could be viewed in an entirely different context,” he said.

AMD began using the name “2nd Generation Ultrathin Platform” instead of Congo as part of a natural pre-launch naming transition, Taylor said. “The Daily Kos blog helped finalize and expedite a process that was already in motion,” he added. “We’re striving for that codename to be retired.”

I appreciate AMD’s response to the naming issue. What’s equally important is their statement that AMD adheres to the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) Code of Conduct, which is researching extractive metals supply chains for tin, tantalum, and cobalt.

Thanks to all who joined in the complaint to AMD by communicating with the company in response to the original post.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Fight Over Congo Minerals

Journalist Rima Abdelkader wrote a well-informed piece about the role of illicit minerals in fueling the conflict in Congo. I added these comments to her article on the Huffington Post:

While demanding that electronics manufacturers take responsibility for their supply chain is a commendable approach, there are other culprits whose actions contribute more directly to the atrocities in eastern Congo. One is Rwanda, which exports coltan even though it has no known mines within its borders. Paul Kagame’s government says it is working on source accreditation that will show where it gets the mineral and provide the type of supply chain audit demanded by the Enough Project and others (as is the DRC), but so far the promises are mere words. Another pressure point are business interests within the DRC itself. Not every villain in this story is a western multinational conglomerate–much of the illicit revenue from cassiterite, gold, and coltan flows right to Congolese individuals who back the rogue militias (and even units of the FARDC) who control many of the mines. Then there are the leaders of the FDLR, the remnants of the Hutu Interahamwe vilified for their role in ongoing conflict in the Kivus. Those criminals live a life of ease in Germany, France, and Belgium enjoying the profits from the mines their troops control in the Congo.

As attorney and activist Joseph Mbangu pointed out, the fight against violence in the DRC is one that must be fought on many fronts. Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Chicago Reader Asks About Congo Rainforest

Recent correspondence with a reader in Chicago raises a delicate quandary:

“…from what I understand, the DRC has the most biodiverse ecosystem outside of the Amazon River Basin and if the DRC ever gets its act together and is able to extract and control those resources, that ecosystem would inevitably be threatened. Could it be that, environmentally, the DRC is better off now than it would be if the natural resources were exploited?”

Here was my response:

The DRC does indeed have the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world. It is a treasured resource for everyone on the planet. That doesn’t mean, however, than it cannot be of great economic benefit to the country. In fact, if the timber resources were properly managed, the ecosystem’s future could be enhanced.

I’ve written about this before in Congo Rainforest Irony, which talks about some of the pluses and minuses of timber development activities in the DRC. The full benefits of this renewable resource, though, won’t be realized until there is stronger oversight of contracts and monitoring of logging activities, both of which are expensive undertakings when so many other needs are crying to be met.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

Women Voices Raised Against Congo Rape

Yesterday’s Break The Silence Forum provided an excellent overview of the rape epidemic that continues unabated in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The program at the New School in Manhattan featured a screening of “The Greatest Silence: Rape In The Congo” followed by an informative panel discussion. Many eyes were opened by the presentations.

Jennifer Thomas-Boateng, the Program Coordinator for the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, NY Metro Chapter, began the program with a powerful discussion of how corporate interests around the world are fueling the war in Congo. She termed several firms “corporate rapists,” including Cabot Corporation and OMG Group, who process minerals that are illegally mined in the DRC, as well as contractors Bechtel, Brown & Root, and MPRI, who are major suppliers to the armed forces of Uganda and Rwanda, nations that have played significant roles in the violence in the DRC.

Actor Vinie Burrows gave a brief history of Congo from King Leopold II to the present, highlighting the continuing theme of exploitation that has marked the nation’s history.

Misengabo E. Kapuadi, a founding member of the Georges Malaika Foundation, spoke about the growing role of the Congolese diaspora in breaking the silence. She quite eloquently pointed out that we were gathered not just to celebrate International Women’s Day, but to make sure women in the Congo are not forgotten.

“The stop the rape, we have to stop the conflict,” she said. “To stop the conflict, we have to stop the economic exploitation of the Congo.”

Nita Evele, representing the Friends of the Congo and Congo Global Action, gave an impassioned explanation of how terror rape has grown to epidemic proportions in the DRC. The Congolese army, she pointed out, is made up of former rebel groups–the same people who victimized the civilian population for years. Many of the soldiers were children when the fighting started in 1996, and were themselves traumatized.

The rebel forces use terror rape to control villages near the mineral deposits and rich farmlands they covet. The idea, as Nita put it, is to “kill the soul and spirit of the people by inflicting harm that hurts forever.” Raping and killing children in front of their mothers, forcing children to rape their own mothers, humiliating men and boys by raping them, and using guns, sticks, knives, and other foreign objects to destroy a woman’s ability to reproduce are some of the abominable tactics these criminals use.

The event was sponsored by Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Friends of the Congo, as well as Project Africa at the New School, Black Radical Congress, Granny Peace Brigade, Barnard Center for Research on Women, and Medgar Evers College.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.

NY Times Explains Congo Perfectly

For an excellent explanation of the cause behind the unending war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, see the New York Times article that ran Sunday, November 17, 2008.

Reporter Lydia Polgreen tells how Colonel Samy Matumo and his renegade brigade collects an outlandish $80,000,000 annually from the mining region he controls in North Kivu. She also describes the living and working conditions faced by the people of the region, which could have been lifted unchanged from accounts of King Leopold’s reign over the Congo.

Polgreen’s explanation of how a private army can operate unfettered in today’s Congo is spot-on, too. She explores the quandaries faced by the UN, the Congolese government to whom Colonel Matumo technically reports, and the South African mining company that has the legal right to mine the area.

The situation described in this article is emblematic of the struggle to control the Congo’s riches, a struggle that has cost nearly six million lives in the last ten years.

Dave Donelson, author of Heart of Diamonds a romantic thriller about blood diamonds in the Congo.