NEWPORT, R.I. – While many Americans believe they couldn’t live without their cell phones, a documentary film by Frank Piasecki Poulsen contends that demand for these phones is funding a civil war in the Congo that has cost millions of lives.
The film, “Blood in the Mobile,” which gives viewers a glimpse into the world of conflict minerals, will be shown at Salve Regina University on Tuesday, Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. Sponsored by the social work department and Social Work Club, the film will be screened in Room 160 of O’Hare Academic Center, located in the Antone Academic Center.
”Blood in the Mobile” shows the connection between cell phones and the civil war in the Congo. Poulsen traveled to DR Congo to document the illegal mine industry. He gets access to Congo’s largest tin-mine, which is being controlled by different armed groups, and where children work for days in narrow mine tunnels to dig out the minerals that end up in our phones.
The Western world is buying these so-called conflict minerals and thereby financing a civil war that, Poulsen contends, has been the bloodiest conflict since World War II. During the last 15 years the conflict has cost the lives of more than 5 million people.
Blood in Mobile is a film about our responsibility for the conflict in the Congo and about corporate social responsibility.