After an eventful trip to eastern Congo in June and many months in production, an all-new segment called CONGO GOLD aired on CBS’ 60 Minutes tonight. Visit our special conflict minerals mini-site to learn about what you can do to end the suffering in the Congo.
Enough’s John Prendergast traveled to war-torn region with the 60 Minutes film crew to investigate and capture on camera the connection between the mining of gold and other precious minerals in eastern Congo and the violence that has contributed to the deaths of over 4.5 million people in the past decade.
Here’s how John Prendergast described their trip in an op-ed for the Boston Globe:
Being held at gunpoint by 30 drunk and angry militia in the middle of the night on a deserted road in one of the most dangerous war zones in the world was not our plan when we started out the day. But my traveling companions and I were digging into the links between the illicit mining of Congo’s "conflict minerals” and a deadly war, and we didn’t expect a walk in the park. We had visited a gold mine contested by some particularly vengeful armed groups, and this militia had lost out in controlling the mine and wasn’t happy about the result. After hours of negotiations, guns poked into ribs, and death threats, we emerged relatively unscathed and $1,000 poorer. Congolese civilians, however, are rarely so fortunate.
For 41 years, 60 Minutes has been telling the world’s most compelling stories in 12-minute segments, educating generations of families and expanding their horizons. Tonight millions learnt about the deadliest war in the world deep in the jungles of Central Africa and our own links to it.