'Conflict coltan' cited in Congo genocide talk by SAC student

Peddar Panga of the Democratic Republic of Congo speaks at San Antonio College on Monday Feb. 20, 2012. The nursing student says the mining of so-called conflict minerals in his homeland has come at the cost of brutal civil war and genocide, which continues as militias battle for control of mining areas. less Peddar Panga of the Democratic Republic of Congo speaks at San Antonio College on Monday Feb. 20, 2012. The nursing student says the mining of so-called conflict minerals in his homeland has come at the cost ... more Photo: HELEN L. MONTOYA, San Antonio Express-News Photo: HELEN L. MONTOYA, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 'Conflict coltan' cited in Congo genocide talk by SAC student 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

About 30 students at San Antonio College hardly made a sound as Peddar Panga told his story Monday.

They didn't slouch in their seats, and none looked at their cell phones.

The soft-spoken former soldier of the Democratic Republic of Congo, now a nursing student at SAC, captivated them at a Black History Month presentation on the ongoing war in Congo and the role industrialized nations play in that violence.

Afterward, they used words such as “disturbing” and “stark” to describe Panga's accounts of what 15 years of war have done to “a beautiful country in the heart of Africa that has everything that could make it a potential superpower.”

Part African history report, part awareness campaign, Panga's talk was direct in connecting his country's instability to the world's dependence on coltan, a mineral mined in Congo and used in the manufacture of cell phones, laptops and other electronics, as well as in the automobile industry and in the making of ballistic missiles.

Coltan is called a “conflict mineral.” Panga called it “blood coltan,” pointing to the 5.4 million who've died in his homeland.

Though the nation's civil war officially ended in 2003, he said, “The fighting has been going on for the exploitation of coltan, all at the expense of Congo lives.”

“There is blood on your cell phone, death on your laptop. Rape is in your car,” said Panga, 37, who came to the United States in 2005. “All the world is accountable for what is happening in the Democratic Republic of Congo.”

Multiple reasons fuel the violence, he said, including the longstanding ethnic warring between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes and the bloody wars in Rwanda and Uganda.

But he pointed at militias vying for control of mining regions for the sexual violence against women and children, crimes that have led to increased rates of HIV and AIDS.

While the United Nations and the U.S. government are fully aware, he said “the U.S. population doesn't know what's going on.”

He criticized U.N. inaction and cited humanitarian groups such as the Enough Project as responsive to the crisis.

But he said ordinary people such as college students can help by exposing the violence via social networks.

“No one by himself can end what is happening in the Congo,” he said. But “actions people take on social networks make people know this is going on.”

Dee Dixon, a journalism student at SAC and president of the Black Student Alliance, said awareness is what it hoped to create.

“We're here to learn about other people's lives,” she said. “There are things happening in this world that we need to be aware of. It brings a reality to it, and people here have a capacity to do something about it.”

eayala@expresss-news.net

Twitter: @ElaineAyala