CPTnet
23 August 2007
COLOMBIA: Coca-cola union demands justice

by Joseph Betz (member of July 2007 CPT delegation), translated by Suzanna
Collerd

[Note: "Presente," Spanish for "present" or "here," is a phrase often
chanted in public witnesses to proclaim that those who have died, or who
have been murdered, are still present, still witnesses against the people or
systems that killed them.]

On Monday 23 July 2007, the Colombia Christian Peacemaker Team delegation
participated in a demonstration at the Barrancabermeja Coca-Cola plant along
with members of the Coca-Cola union, USO oil-workers union, Catholic nuns,
local organizers, and concerned community members. The event kicked off the
new campaign against Coca-Cola by the union workers of the Coca-Cola
bottling plants in Colombia.

Eight Coca-Cola union members in Colombia have been assassinated in the past
nine years. After a vocal international campaign (see www.killercoke.org
http://www.killercoke.org> for more information) and major pressure from the
international community for truth, justice and reparations for the victim's
families, Coca-Cola entered negotiations with the food and beverage worker's
union SINALTRAINAL. As part of a written agreement, the union members did
not publish further information about the atrocities they had suffered and
discontinued their campaign against the company for a year. The union asked
the company for Holistic Reparations that would include a public document
that recognized Coca-Cola's guilt in the deaths of unionists at the hands of
paramilitaries both inside and outside the company. A year later,
negotiations did not advance and were only focused on economic reparations;
nevertheless Coca-cola continued to violate worker's rights through firings
and threats and therefore the victims' families and union co-workers again
are lifting up the memory of their assassinated loved ones: Presente!
Presente! Presente!

The decision to end negotiations puts the union organizers in Colombia (and
those that publicly support them) at great physical risk. Additionally,
since March of 2007, Coca-Cola has fired union workers in Bogot