Lines of Leaving

Fistula
aka "We're spoiled, you die..."

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LYRICS:

Hey little girl, what do you do?
Your daddy’s away. Not coming back
Mommy’s crying. Fistula colliding.
You close your eyes. A rabbit disguise...

DVD’s and MP3’s, LCD’s and bigger screens. More and more we fill our needs
controlled by overmarketing...
DVD’s and MP3’s, LCD’s and bigger screens. More and more we fill our needs
controlled by overmarketing...

It’s gonna be harder now,
trying to make up somehow.
You could’ve been anything.
We should’ve seen this coming.
While we can take everything,
leave you on suffering.
Nobody knows how it goes
coltan in our mobile phones...
And every time, we’re spoiled you die.

Hey little boy, just play with your toys.
Don’t look around keep your eyes on the ground cause I don’t want you to see how the army machine gun kills your parents...

FISTULA - Official music video
In modern day Congo:

"Girls as young as 8 and women as old as 73 sat on small wire cots wrapped in gray blankets donated by UNICEF. All had been raped and were undergoing counselling for trauma. Some said they considered killing themselves after surviving multiple rapes. Some had puddles of urine under their seats because of their condition...."

Vaginal fistula means rips in the vaginal wall where rape tore out chunks of flesh separating the bladder and rectum from the vagina. In Congo gang rape is often a primary weapon of the several rebel forces and even recommended by their commanders . Sometimes gang raping just isn't enough and they use broken bottles, branches or bayonets too. There has been an estimated 600 000 rapes in Congo. The rebels are kept in power by only one thing, pillaging of the country's mineral resources such as coltan, cobalt, tantalite etc. and smuggling them to the global suppliers in order to get guns. Congo has the greatest single resource of coltan in the world. The suppliers sell the minerals to the global electronic industry which uses them in computers, game consoles, digital cameras, cell phones, TV’s and other electronic devices.

At same time in modern welfare state:

"A man buys his fifth mobile phone in two years, not knowing that the minerals used for his phone components might have caused dozens of gang rapes and fistulas in the rivalries between the Congolese rebel forces for the control of etc. coltan mines...."

The biggest mobile phone corporations have recently advised their suppliers to avoid coltan from Congo. The mineral supply chain is however so complex and long that the corporations won't dare to say that their components wouldn't contain any coltan from Congo.

"They smuggle it from there so haphazardly and all anyhow so that in the end no one can tell that their component doesn't have a single chip that origins from Congo"- said the chief of environmental communications of Nokia about 3 years ago.

But already the mobile industries have changed the construction of mobile phones so that there’s usually just a single chip in a mobile that’s been made of coltan due to the pressure from the consumers…

SPEAK UP YOUR MIND AND DEMAND THE ELECTRONIC DEVICE MANUFACTURERS FOR BLOOD-FREE COMPONENTS! And if try to say it’s impossible, settle for your old electronic devices or buy recycled ones…!

LINKS AND SOURCES:

(in English:)

http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2005/congo.asp

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A14059-2003Oct24?language=printer

http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=276

http://www.un.org/News/dh/latest/drcongo.htm

http://www.gesi.org/files/ffi_coltan-report_en.pdf

http://www.endfistula.org/

VIDEOS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cYdjInNsqk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX16MhfsLAI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UN44Lj4KwY