Protesters flock to Apple stores around the world on iPhone 16 launch day
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 signs and banners saying Apple is “profiting from genocide”—demanded that Apple stop its cobalt supply from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the mines are located notorious for dangerous conditions, low wages, frequent use of child labor and human rights violations.
Apple has said it does not source minerals from mines where these conditions occur, although it said that there are “challenges” in tracking its mineral supply chain. In 2022, this tracking led the company to delete 12 suppliers. Government of Congo recently asked companies involved in potential “blood minerals” in their supply chains.
Protesters also called on Apple to break its silence on the ongoing war in Gaza, which has 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 and about a dozen former Apple employees, mostly in retail roles at Apple Stores.
Group, originally called Apples4Ceasefire, in partnership with Friends of the Congo and local activist groups in cities around the world. Social media posts show protesters holding banners outside Apple stores in Bristol, ReadLondon, Tokyo, BrusselsCape Town, AmsterdamMexico City, Montrealand Cardiff. In the United States, protests took place at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, as well as in Palo Alto and Berkeley.
Many of these protests involved only a handful of people, often waving large banners and large flags of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Palestine. Most of the protesters in person were not Apple employees.
The largest crowd was in Berlin, where more than three dozen people joined the protest. They chanted slogans from behind barricades, keeping them away from the Apple Store. Footage showed police directing protesters away and arresting one person wearing a keffiyeh. Tariq Ra’Ouf, a leading organizer with Apples Against Apartheid, told WIRED that five protesters were arrested.
Ra’Ouf worked at an Apple Store in Seattle for 12 years before being fired in July. They said they were fired for a “technical issue” that they believe “should have been a warning for misconduct.” They believe their firing may have been retaliation for publicly challenging the company’s “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 we want to bring this to them as consumers, and so we want to disrupt their biggest day of the year as much as possible,” Ra’Ouf told WIRED. “We want to [them] to evaluate how much money they make on launch day and how many phones they can sell, and really make it clear to them that there’s a lot of support for these communities that they’re ignoring.”
