To add to the violence, the State and Coca Cola have unleashed a campaign of criminalisation of the union and any social protest. This has included announcements from management that the union is linked to guerrilla groups and legal actions against Sinaltrainal members on terrorism and rebellion charges, based on set ups and falsified evidence Trade union offices are regularly raided, one was burned to the ground, and most recently Coca Cola have sued the union for calumny and defamation.
The Colombian state, in a display of complicity with the multinational has not investigated, charged or sanctioned anyone for carrying out this terror. On the contrary, they continue their own persecution of the trade union and social movement, they dismantle existing workers rights, set up maquila or sweat shop zones, and increase the criminalisation of social protest and escalate Colombia’s dirty war.
The following are just some of the abuses which killer Coke have carried out in Colombia:
On the 2 May 1992, Jose Gabriel Castro, MD of Coca Cola in Colombia, publicly accused the workers and Sinaltrainal of being guerrilla agents.
In April 1994, Jose Eleazar Manco David, Sinaltrainal activist and Coca Cola worker was assassinated in Carepa, Antioquia.
23 April 1995, Luis Enrique Gomez Granados, Sinaltrainal activist and Coca Cola worker was assassinated, also in Carepa.
4 November 1995, 5th Brigade of the Colombian army raid Sinaltrainal office in Bucaramanga, Santander.
30 September 1996, same Sinaltrainal office raided, this time by National Police.
5 December 1996, assassination of Isidro Segundo Gil Gil, Secretary General of Sinaltrainal in Carepa. He was assassinated by paramilitaries inside the plant while negotiating the workers’ collective agreement.
5 December 1996, paramilitaries force their way into Sinaltrainal offices in Carepa, take all documents and set fire to the building.
9 December 1996, paramilitaries enter Coca Cola plant in Carepa, round up all the workers, and force them at gunpoint to renounce their union membership.
26 December 1996, Jose Libardo Osorio Herrera, 65, Sinaltrainal activist and Coca Cola worker in Carepa was dragged out of his workplace by heavily armed paramilitaries. His body was found the next day in Chigorodo, Antioquia.
8 February 1999, magazine Cambio 16 published an article claiming that Coca Cola had contracted paramilitary groups to sort out their “labour problems”, and that on 15 August 1998, the directors of Coca Cola’s bottling operations had met in Monteria, Cordoba, with a messenger from Carlos Castano, head of the AUC, Colombia’s largest paramilitary group.
4 June 2001, all workers at all bottling plants in Colombia are locked in the work places against their will and threatened to renounce their work contracts. Those that do not renounce are fired. The same had happened in February and October 2000. Coca Cola sack more than 1000 workers.
21 June 2001, Oscar Dario Soto Polo, Sinaltrainal activist and Coca Cola worker assassinated in Monteria, Cordoba.
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