[…]
Lawsuits were filed in the United States in 2001 and 2006 by
the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund on
behalf of SINALTRAINAL, several of its members who were falsely imprisoned and
the survivors of Isidro Gil and Adolfo de Jesus Munera, two of its murdered
officers. The lawsuits charged Coca-Cola bottlers "contracted with or
otherwise directed paramilitary security forces that utilized extreme violence
and murdered, tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade union
leaders." The lawsuits and campaign were developed to force Coca-Cola to
once and for all end further bloodshed, compensate victims and provide safe
working conditions.
The Campaign called for the main judge, Joseph E. Martinez,
who presided over the original lawsuits against The Coca-Cola Co. and its
Colombian bottlers in Federal District Court in Miami, Florida, to recuse
himself because of serious conflicts of interest and statements he made about
the case. (Read
"Talking Points" 3 on Martinez)
Coca-Cola, which is virulently anti-union, claims that any
allegations that its bottlers in Colombia are involved in the systematic
intimidation, kidnapping, torture, and murder of union leaders are false. Yet
the company has fought every effort to have an independent investigation into
these allegations while at the same time has misled the public and its own
shareholders with a long string of lies and bogus investigations. (Read
"Talking Points" 4 on bogus investigations)
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in Colombia.
Guatemala
On February 25, 2010, another human rights
abuse lawsuit against Coca-Cola was filed in the Supreme Court of the
State of New York and later moved to federal district court. "This case
involves a campaign of violence - including rape, murder, and attempted murder
- against trade unionists and their families at the behest of the management of
Coca-Cola bottling and processing plants in Guatemala."
It should be noted what happened in the '70s and '80s in
Guatemala City: According to "Soft Drink, Hard Labor" published by
the Latin America Bureau (UK) in 1987, "For nine years the 450 workers at
the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Guatemala City fought a battle for their jobs,
their trade union and their lives. Three times they occupied the plant — on the
last occasion for 13 months. Three General Secretaries of their union were
murdered and five other workers killed. Four more were kidnapped and have
disappeared. Against all the odds they survived."
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in
Guatemala.
Turkey
In Turkey, in 2005, 105 workers at a Coca-Cola bottling
plant in Istanbul joined a union and were terminated. They organized a lengthy
sit-down strike in front of the main offices of Coca-Cola in Turkey. After
several weeks of protesting, Coca-Cola workers entered the building to demand
their reinstatement. While leaders of the workers were meeting with senior
management for the company, the company ordered Turkish riot police to attack
the workers who were by all accounts peacefully assembled, many with their
spouses and children. Nearly two hundred of them were beaten badly and many
required hospitalization. Lawsuits are pending.
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in Turkey.
China
In China: Based on undercover investigations at several Coke
plants, Chinese press reported in December 2008 that Coke employees are
"involved in the most dangerous, intense and tiresome labor, work the
longest hours, but receive the lowest wages and face arrears and even cutbacks
in their pay." One investigator claimed that Coke violated Chinese labor
laws and reported that workers "often worked 12 hours per day for an
entire month without a single day off."
In a report, "Violence in Coca-Cola's Labor Subcontracting
System in China," it was revealed:
"On the 12 August 2009, a labor dispatch company hired
by Coca-Cola's designated Hangzhou-based bottling plant was discovered to have
threatened two university student-workers who asked for their own and their two
other fellow workers' back pay upon their resignation. Xiao Liang, 24, was
beaten up by two managers at the labor dispatch company's office, resulting in
serious wounds over his left eye, left hand, and right ear. Xiao Xu sent Xiao
Liang to the Dongfang Hospital immediately after police arrived on the scene.
Xiao Liang was later diagnosed with a ruptured eardrum, resulting in
compromised hearing capacity..."
Two years earlier, BBC News (5/21/07) reported that
Coca-Cola has been accused of benefiting from prison labor in China.
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in China.
Mexico
Mexico, the country with the highest per capita consumption
of Coca-Cola, is a huge profit center for Coke to the detriment of the health
of millions of children and adults who suffer an inordinate rate of obesity,
diabetes and other serious maladies. Dr. Ann Lopez, author and environmental
science Professor, Ph.D. at San Jose City College in California, and Director
of the Center
for Farmworker Families states:
"The people of west central Mexico are easy corporate
prey for predator Coke. You can't stand anywhere in some of the rural towns and
not see a Coke ad. I've seen what Coke is doing in the west central Mexico
countryside where I do research: pushing their addictive products on peasant
populations who can ill afford them and in which one in 10 may have undiagnosed
diabetes."
To control the soft drinks market in Mexico, Coca-Cola has
shown repeatedly it will break the law. The Angel Alvarado Agüero case,
currently in the Mexican courts, describes how this former marketing executive
of Coca-Cola was unjustifiably dismissed when he refused to carry out illegal
monopolistic marketing practices as directed by the Company. This case also
highlights how The Coca-Cola Co. is cheating Mexican workers out of hundreds of
millions of dollars in profit sharing and other benefits and shortchanging the
Mexican government out of millions of dollars in tax revenues.
Investigative reporter Beverly Bell pointed out that
"...more than 12 million people do not have access to potable water in
Mexico." She explains how then-Mexican President Vicente Fox, who prior to
his election in 2000 was president of Coca-Cola in Mexico and Latin America,
"...with help from the World Bank-has successfully pursued water
privatization, as well as a massive land privatization program, that allowed
companies free access to all the resources on the land, including water."
Bell wrote in 2006, "Since 2000 [while Fox was
president], Coca-Cola has negotiated 27 water concessions from the Mexican
government. Nineteen of the concessions are for the extraction of water from
aquifers and from 15 different rivers, some of which belong to indigenous
peoples. Eight concessions are for the right of Coke to dump its industrial
waste into public waters."
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in Mexico.
El Salvador
In addition to abuse of workers, Coke has been involved in
the exploitation of children by benefiting from hazardous child labor in sugar
cane fields in El Salvador. This was first documented by Human Rights Watch in
2004 and in footage taken in 2007 for a nationally-televised British
documentary and highlighted in Mark Thomas's book "Belching Out the
Devil: Global Adventures with Coca-Cola," published in 2009 in the
U.S.
Representatives of the International Labor Organization
interviewed company representatives at Colombian Coca-Cola bottling plants in
2008 to ascertain whether they exercised any control of suppliers of raw
materials (such as sugar) to ensure that they did not use child labor. The
manager at the Coke plant in Cali said that their suppliers should not use
child labor, but added "that the enterprise [Coca-Cola] did not yet
exercise oversight over this issue."
Read more about Coca Cola's crimes in El
Salvador.
India
Of the 200 countries where Coca-Cola is sold, India
reportedly has the fastest-growing market, but the adverse environmental
impacts of its operations there have subjected The Coca-Cola Co. and its local
bottlers to a firestorm of criticism and protest. There has been a growing
outcry against Coca-Cola's production practices throughout India, which are
draining out vast amounts of public groundwater and turning farming communities
into virtual deserts. Suicide rates among Indian farmers whose livelihoods are
being destroyed are growing at an alarming rate. Every day for years there has
been some form of protest, from large demonstrations to small vigils, against
Coca-Cola's abuses in India.
One target of protest has been the Coca-Cola bottling plant
in Plachimada, Kerala, which has remained shut down since March 2004 as a
result of the community-led campaign in Plachimada challenging Coca-Cola's
abuse of water resources.
The International Environmental Law Research Centre issued a
report in 2007 that stated, in part, "The deterioration of groundwater in
quality and quantity and the consequential public health problems and the
destruction of the agricultural economy are the main problems identified in
Plachimada. The activity of The Coca Cola Company has caused or contributed a
great deal to these problems...The availability of good quality water for
drinking purposes and agriculture has been affected dangerously due to the activity
of the Company. Apart from that, the Company had also polluted the agricultural
lands by depositing the hazardous wastes. All these points to the gross
violation of the basic human rights, that is, the right to life, right to
livelihood and the violation of the pollution control laws."
In 2009, the government of Kerala set up the High Power
Committee to Assess the Extent of Damages Caused by the Coca-Cola Plant at
Plachimada, India, which "recommended that Coca-Cola be held liable for
Indian Rupees 216 crore (US$ 48 million) for damages caused as a result of the
company's bottling operations in Plachimada."
Read more about Coca-Cola's crimes in India.
Read On...
[…]
When people see Coca-Cola ads, they should think of crimes
and misconduct on a worldwide scale so unthinkable that all of Coke's products
become undrinkable!
To read more about the abuses in various countries, go to
"Coke's Crimes (By Country)" in our main menu. We would appreciate
any additional information regarding Coca-Cola abuses that we can use to further
document Coke's crimes throughout the world. We can be contacted at info@KillerCoke.org or
(718) 852-2808.
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