Customers around the world flocked to Apple Stores on Friday to buy the iPhone 16 on launch day, but customers in more than a dozen cities were met with protests organized by current and former Apple employees.
Protesters, holding banners and signs saying Apple is “profiting from genocide,” demanded that Apple stop cobalt extraction from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the mines are located known for unsafe conditions, low wages, constant operate of child labor and human rights violations.
However, Apple has stated that it does not source minerals from mines where such conditions prevail, it said that there are “challenges” in tracking mineral supply chains. In 2022, that tracking led the company to remove 12 suppliers.Congo Government recently interrogated company in the context of potential “blood minerals” in its supply chain.
Protesters also called on Apple to break its silence on the ongoing war in the Gaza Strip, which is ongoing called genocide by some human rights experts.
The protests, which took place in 10 countries, were organized primarily by Apples Against Apartheid, a group of five current Apple employees and about a dozen former Apple employees who primarily held retail positions in Apple stores.
The group, originally called Apples4Ceasefire, has partnered with Friends of the Congo and local activist groups in cities around the world. Social media posts show protesters holding signs outside Apple stores in Bristol, ReadingLondon, Tokyo, BrusselsCapetown, AmsterdamMexico City, Montrealand Cardiff. In the United States, protests were held at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, as well as in Palo Alto and Berkeley.
Many of these protests had just a few participants, often waving vast banners and vast Democratic Republic of Congo and Palestinian flags. Most of the protesters in person were not Apple employees.
The largest turnout was in Berlin, where more than three dozen people took part in the protest, chanting from behind a barricade that kept them away from an Apple Store. Footage shows police directing protesters away and arresting a person wearing a keffiyeh. Tariq Ra’Ouf, a lead organizer with Apples Against Apartheid, tells WIRED that five protesters were arrested.
Ra’Ouf worked at an Apple store in Seattle for 12 years before being fired in July. They say they were fired over a “technical issue” that they believe “should have been a red flag for misconduct.” They believe their firing was likely retaliation for publicly challenging the company for “anti-Palestinian bias and racism.” Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the protest or Ra’Ouf’s allegations.
“The idea is that we want to convey that to them as consumers, so we want to disrupt their most important day of the year as much as possible,” Ra’Ouf tells WIRED. “We want to [them] to gauge how much money they make on launch day and how many phones they’re able to sell, and really show them visibly that there’s a lot of support for these communities that they’re just ignoring.”