March 6, 2017
I urge you to uphold and maintain the rules to prevent the import of "conflict minerals," as required by Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Any revocation of the rule, as the Acting Chairman suggests, will result in massive human end ecological devastation, as occurred during the heyday of pirate mining and minerals laundering into American supply chains. The SEC rule was a long-overdue change in US policy to prevent American consumers and retailers from being the unwitting enablers of bloodshed and ecological devastation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Contrary to the Commissioner's assertions, whose audience with African citizens must have been carefully curated toward the interests of deregulation, over 100 Congolese civil society groups and other individuals have responded, saying that a suspension or weakening of the Rule would lead armed groups to return to dystopian pirate mines and cause a new humanitarian crisis.