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Dealing with a Dictator
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Dealing with a Dictator

41 MIN · EN · STATUS: [ STREAMING ]
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Nevsun Resources, a small Vancouver mining company, strikes gold in Eritrea and builds a mine that generates roughly $700 million in profits within its first four years. The catch: Eritrea's government, run by dictator Isaias Afewerki, holds a 40% stake in the operation. Reporter Mark Kelley of CBC's the fifth estate lays out the allegations that follow that partnership, drawing on interviews with former miners who describe forced labor, beatings, and degrading treatment, alongside claims from the United Nations and Human Rights Watch that the regime used conscripted military labor and funneled mine profits toward the terrorist group al-Shabaab. A Nevsun representative appears on camera denying any knowledge of abuses and calling the company's practices a template for responsible international business, pointing to its benefits packages and working conditions as proof. Kelley keeps both accounts in frame without resolving them, leaving the film's real question open: what happens when a company profits from a partnership it says it cannot fully see into.