It's home to mines containing some of the purest gold in the world.

But while consumers in richer countries are prepared to pay high prices for a finished product.

The men who mind this precious commodity are paying a price of a different kind.

Extortion and rights abuses are rife at the DRC gold mines which are controlled by a brutal rebel group.

Access to foreign journalists has been restricted until now.

But a joint investigation with the german news weekly Der Spiegel has resulted in D.

W.

S.

Mariel miller being allowed to enter to rebel controlled gold mines and speak to minors themselves.

This gold may gleam brightly, but it is stained red with blood.

People likely died for this precious metal destined for the rich world's finest jewelries.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has some of the purest gold in the world.

But experts say almost all of it smuggled out of the country illegally.

That often means links to armed groups and human rights abuses.

It all starts here in suffocatingly hot tunnels that hit up to 40°C young men scrape out the gold bearing rock, they earn barely enough to survive on for fear of reprisals.

This man wants to remain anonymous.

When you go to work, you just pray to God because we're feeling like it's a death sentence.

Often it is when the mines cave in six years ago, more than 20 people were buried alive.

I was there with my three brothers and other miners, all of them were trapped inside the mine.

Even now, their bodies are still inside.

I was sad really down but I can't be sad for long.

I have to earn a living.

And on top of that this mine is controlled by an armed group.

The my my MBA.

According to a recent report, the rebels demand what they call taxes from each worker.

They beat me up with an iron rod because they couldn't pay their tax.

They threw me into a mud hole for days with no food.

I was imprisoned there with six other people.

He lost 10 kg.

He says other miners tell us similar stories.

They say the Mai mai are never far even now they're hiding further up the mountain because they weren't formed.

We were coming.

This is the first time journalists have access this mine.

Both the Mamiya Katumba and local government officials declined our interview requests.

It's widely known that the rebels often work together with local authorities and even share profits with them.

But with the money they also finance brutal attacks on an ethnic group who they see as their main enemy.

The my my claim the Banya mulenga don't belong to the D.

R.

C.

So they burn down their villages, rape and kill scores of people eastern.

And you're a survived one of these attacks, They found us at the place where we had sought refuge and they killed three people.

Then they murdered my father in law and injured my mother in law both of them were over 80.

She says she and her family were forced to March for days with no food.

Then they took her husband.

She never saw him again.

Later she learned he was hacked to death with a machete.

They killed dozens displaced hundreds.

Now easter safe, sheltering at a friend's house.

Rebel control of the mines means conflict gold, but that's not deterring this businessman.

The purity of the precious metal has convinced him soon.

He plans to open the first gold refinery in the country and export from DRC to europe and America.

At the moment we discussing a lot with the government.

They will check all artisans who are coming to work here.

We will, they will try and trace how is going on.

And maybe it will help.

I hope it will help.

But ensuring authenticity will be difficult, traders tell us they fake certificates to hide the real origin of the gold.

Eastern and a huracan only appeal for an end to the trade in blood gold.

I hear the my my cell go to white people to buy weapons.

That's why they sell the gold.

I want to tell these white people to stop buying from them so they don't kill us with these weapons.

For easter, it is a simple equation.

As long as armed groups can reap profits from gold mining, they will keep earning the cash to kill for more.

We can speak now with Christophe fogle.

He's an expert on Central Africa and recently published a book about the role minerals play in conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

He joins us from brussels.

Thanks for being with us.

First of all, Christof.

The mind we saw in that report, it's one of many in the D.

R.

C.

The country has rich reserves of minerals yet its people remain among the poorest in the world.

Can you explain that discrepancy for us?

Yeah.

Hello.

There is.

Well there's probably two things to say on the on a broader scale.

The first one being um Indeed um the Congo is like rich in minerals and produces a lot of very important minerals.

However um the link between those artisanal mines and poverty is a bit mistaken because um um the industrial mines were especially copper and cobalt are sourced in other parts of the country where there has been a lot of corruption involving international companies in the past decades or actually sort of the main economic engine of the country.

That would um need sort of a reform to actually benefit the people and fight poverty on a larger scale.

And the second thing is if you look at the Eastern Congo where you have a lot of armed conflicts going on.

It is true that the story that we just heard about the Mamiya Katumba is one of the clear cases where there is um control for the sake of mining by armed groups.

However, out of the some hand, 120 armed groups that are currently operating in Eastern Congo, that is pretty much an outlier case where we see today that there is only a minority of armed groups that are actually operating with the main objective to secure mining areas.

Okay, so it's important to keep an eye on the commercial aspect of minerals extraction in the DRC as well.

Tell us why authorities in the DRC have not tackled the illegal mining of gold.

Well, for a number of reasons, I mean, the first reason sort of was implied in my answer in my previous answer that in the end, um the artisanal mining of gold, but also other substances, substances such as Colton does not represent a very important share of Congo's economy.

So there is a limited attention as compared to other sectors such as copper and cobalt, where industrial mining is um, is way more important that than, than the goal being exported from Congo.

The second reason is that um the threshold of what is legal and illegal is often not very clear.

So you had sort of contraband and fraud in gold, especially to neighboring countries such as Uganda has a very long story and it's often not perceived necessarily as um an illegal thing and that has predated armed conflict and will probably also extend if ever armed conflict will end in that region.

Now there are international efforts to regulate unethical mining in the DRC and elsewhere.

How successful are those efforts?

Well, there have been efforts in um in other minerals, especially colton tin and tungsten um that um broadly failed because they didn't the United brought an end to two armed activities in the region, nor could they actually give a reasonable assurance in the case of gold is a little bit more complicated because there's a number of pilot projects to trace the origin of of so called conflict gold.

But the chemical composition of gold, which is unique as in that it is exactly identical from a geochemical point makes it harder to trace gold to its origin.

And the value for for weight, which is much higher in gold than in most other minerals, also makes it much easier to hide in small quantities that can then be brought together again into bigger quantities in major hubs such as Dubai or places in europe and also christoph.

Thank you very much.

I'm afraid we're out of time there.

That was that was author and researcher christoph.