Apple faces global protests as iPhone 16 launches
Protests against Apple's policies have been held in conjunction with the launch of the iPhone 16, outside the company's stores in more than a dozen cities in 10 different countries, including London, Tokyo, Brussels, Cape Town, Amsterdam, Mexico City and Manhattan. These protests were organized by current and former employees of the company.
The protesters demanded that Apple not use cobalt from areas such as the Congo, where human rights violations are committed, in addition to other minerals used in the manufacture of its devices from that country, such as gold, tantalum, tin and tungsten, according to them.
Protesters criticized Apple for its silence on the Gaza war and its cooperation with Israel, including the presence of a research and development center in Israel, which is considered the second largest center for the American company.
Protesters also called for boycotting Apple products and canceling subscriptions to its various services such as iCloud, streaming services, music, and others.
Banners read “Apple profits from genocide” and “A child died in Congo for your phone,” and chants were heard including “From Congo to Palestine, apartheid is a crime,” according to press reports . In response, Apple said it does not import minerals from these sensitive areas and plans to use only recycled cobalt in its products by 2025. The company has not commented on its relationship with Israel or expressed a clear position on the current war.
“The idea of not having to mine at all is to use all recycled materials, and today we use 100 percent recycled cobalt in our watches and 100 percent recycled gold, tin, tungsten and other rare earth metals in our watches,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We’re really proud of that. But for those products where we still rely on mining, we have a high level of traceability in our supply chain to check for child labor.”
The company has excluded some suppliers in the past due to problems with some mines, and some of the protests were organized mainly by the group “Apple Against Apartheid,” which is made up of current and former Apple employees, although the majority of the protesters were not employees of the company.
Although the number of participants in the protests was relatively small, according to the circulated videos, the German capital, Berlin, witnessed the gathering of dozens of demonstrators, and five of them were arrested, according to the organizers of the protest.
Last March, a letter signed by about 300 current and former Apple employees was published, in which they claimed that the company punishes or fires employees who support the Palestinian people by wearing pins or similar symbols.
Earlier this year, other employees staged protests against Project Nimbus, a partnership between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government to provide cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure to the Israeli military, and Amazon and Meta employees have clashed with their management over issues related to the ongoing war.