”The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), one of the poorest countries on earth (second-to-last on the United Nations’ Human Development Index) and central battleground of what has become known as ‘Africa’s World War’ (Prunier 2011), a protracted conflict involving the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and semi-autonomous warlords and militias in a struggle largely focused on control of resources such as cobalt, gold, diamonds, copper, timber – and coltan" (Dyer-Witheford 2015, 105).
Until I read Witheford’s chapter on Mobiles, I was largely ignorant of what coltan is and how its abundance in Congo has resulted in its becoming a conflict zone. Having read about this complex crisis, it appears that multiple players – nations, companies, industries, local militia, politicians – have a stake in maintaining and fuelling political instability, an informal economy and other forms of struggles in Congo, as prices of coltan remain low, allowing them to reap huge profit margins. This crisis has resulted in multiple atrocities in the region. One of the consequences of the crisis has been the displacement and persecution of several Congonese. In this post, I want to discuss and reflect upon Yiombi Thoma, a man who fled the DRC to avoid persecution.
Investigating the political turmoil in DRC, working as a national intelligence officer for seven years, Yiombi Thoma was forced to flee his country to avoid persecution. He first arrived in China, but refrained from seeking refugee status given the strong ties the country had with DRC. He applied for a visa for Ethiopia but was not granted one. He finally landed in Korea, a country he knew nothing about, but one that granted him a visa. Upon his arrival, he applied for refugee status but the Korean government did not recognise him as one. The officer at the ministry asked him “to avoid walking the streets for he could be arrested at any time”. Unschooled in the culture and language, with little money and few belongings but also nowhere else to go, Thoma worked several illegal jobs: with dogs, in factories, in a hospital. His precarious status prevented him from taking his case to court. When he did, Thoma was finally recognised as a refugee. It took Thoma six years to be recognised as one.
This vignette about Thoma’s travails in South Korea is only a case to highlight how countries where mobile giants like LG and Samsung reside not only cause disruptions in mineral rich regions like DRC, but also turn a blind eye to the fall out such disruption results in. Unwilling to recognise and take responsibility for refugees like Thoma, it falls upon the ‘victims’ (I don’t like the word much), those affected by the disruption, to take it upon themselves to bring to light and change how things are. Thoma is now a refugee activist in South Korea and has written a book about his experiences in South Korea, which he calls a ‘refugee manifesto’. I guess I wrote this piece to express my frustration at the trend where the subjugated – women, blacks, dalits – have to maintain their cool, to talk the language of the oppressor, to take it upon themselves to change the conditions of their own oppression. It’s true that the privileged often just don’t see the conditions they reproduce, but I guess what I’m hoping for is that our early education train us in basic ethics and compassion. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSDeuASCVJ4
Dyer-Witheford, Nick. 2015. Cyber-Proletariat: Global Labour in the Digital Vortex. London: Pluto Press.