Severe abuse and children being shot to death. The brutal abuse is taking place in a mine with close links to the Swedish Export Credit Board. The state agency’s multi-billion subsidy goes to a mine, whose main owner is notorious for its brutal guards.
– It’s awful. It was a level of horror that I was not prepared for, says Tommy Jensen, professor of business administration.
The video clip is brutal. The guard with automatic weapons on his back raises his arm and lets the rough rope whip the men to the ground. The guard strikes again and again while foremen from the mining company laugh and seem to instruct him to continue. The men on the ground scream in pain.
The next clip is even worse. Desperate people scream out their shock and despair. On the ground lie two dead children, shot to death by the mining company’s guards. The dead children are Kasongo, 13 years old, and Banza, 16 years old.
Both incidents occurred in Congo-Kinshasa’s notorious mining district, at a mine owned by the Chinese company Zijin.
Credit guarantees of close to two million
Two miles away is the newer Kamoa copper mine. In that mine too, Zijin is the main owner. The mine is supported by the Swedish Export Credit Board. The state authority has issued credit guarantees of almost two billion kroner in a large deal where Kamoa Copper bought Swedish mining equipment. Sellers of the equipment are Swedish Sandvik and Epiroc.
Kalla Fakta’s investigation shows that the Swedish authorities received warnings before the deal that the mining companies’ guards are notorious for gross abuse of the population.
– If you sit in an authority and get the warning signals before you approve this, I think it’s almost scandalous, says Tommy Jensen, professor of business administration at Stockholm University.
Shot to death two months earlier
The two children were shot to death by Kamoa’s main owner Zijin two months before the Export Credit Board’s director general and board approved the billion-dollar guarantees.
The Export Credit Board must only do business with companies that respect human rights. But the authority is only assessing how the Kamoa mine is doing. What their main owner Zijin does in his older mine in the area is not relevant, according to the general manager.
How do you feel about Zijin’s second mine shooting two children to death?
– Of course it sounds terrible. But we are focusing on the mine that has just started and there we judge that they have the opportunity to meet international requirements, says general manager Anna-Karin Jatko.