The death metal mines spawned by smartphone hunger

Fed by a global hunger for smartphones and tablets, illegal tin mining has turned what was once a tropical paradise into a hell on Earth. Matteo Fagotto reports.

BANGKA Island — it’s 8am in Rebo, a fishing village on the eastern coast of this Indonesian island and like any other day, dozens of ragtag, casually-dressed young men are gathering around the small harbour, equipped only with a jerrycan of fuel and a meagre lunch.

Scorched by the white, tropical sun seeping through the morning haze, they gaze silently at the horizon, each of them absorbed in his own thoughts, patiently waiting for the small fishing boat that will lead them to a series of wooden pontoons, a few hundred meters into the sea.