Swedish Investors Nail Coca-Cola
GES cites reports of acts of violence, anti-union dismissals and murders of trade-union officials at the Coca-Cola bottler plants in "http://www.anncol.org/side/287/Colombia. GES Investment Services is one of Europe's leading analysis companies for socially responsible investments and corporate governance.
However, Coca-Cola spokeperson Lori Billingsley told the New York Post that Coke has "provided detailed facts to GES regarding the false allegations that have been made against the Coca-Cola business in Colombia."
Paramilitaries acting with at least tacit approval of Colombian Coca-Cola officials are suspected in the murder of seven Coca-Cola unionists in recent years and the kidnapping and torture of others. According to the Colombian Trade Union Confederation, CUT, about 3,600 union members have been killed in the last two decades, most at the hands of army-backed right-wing paramilitaries.
GES said that it’s list is based on the prerequisite that companies have a responsibility to comply with international norms even though they are not legally bound to. Blacklisted companies, however, are assumed to have violated basic international norms such as the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights or ILO Core Conventions.
In case the company does not admit responsibility, GES only blacklists if an examination by a UN body confirms the connection between the company and the reported breach, or if sanctions against the company is issued by a court. =================================================================== Danish award given to jailed Colombian unionist
Denmark’s 2004 Bjorneklo Peace Prize was awarded to Luz Perly Córdoba. The Colombian union leader was unable to receive the award in person as she remains detained in Bogotá since 18 February 2004.
19.04.2004 (By Maria Engqvist, ANNCOL) The award was given to a representative of Luz Perly Cordoba (photo) at a ceremony in the office of Copenhagen’s Mayor Per Bregengaard in the Municipal Palace in the Danish capital. Luz Perly Córdoba was chosen by the Bjorneklo Committee for her outstanding role as a defender of the rights of the peasant population in Colombia.
Cordoba is president of the Peasants Association of Arauca (ACA) and leader of the human rights department of FENSUAGRO-CUT, an agrarian federation regrouping different trade unions, social associations and committees working for justice and social change. She was arrested arbitrarily on 18 February 2004 and remains in custody in Bogotá.
According to the Bjorneklo committee, the detention of the recognised human rights defender and many other trade unionists accused of rebellion or terrorism is part of a “wave of repression” which includes murders and torture.
Host of the 31st March ceremony, Mayor Per Bregengaard, stated that the fight against terrorism by the Colombian government serves as a pretext to pursue those who fight for a more just society.
During a meeting with Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos in Dublin on 23 March, Director of the rights group Front Line, Mary Lawlor, expressed concern that there is a pattern in Colombia of human rights defenders being detained without concrete evidence against them and then being released before being brought to trial.
Front Line is a Dublin-based group, founded in 2001 with the aim of protecting Human Rights Defenders, people who work for the rights enshrined in UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The group argues that as Colombia is party to the UN Declaration on Human Rights Defenders, the government has an obligation to address this pattern. Furthermore, Front Line says that if evidence is not produced, Luz Perly Cordoba should be released.
==================================================================== Colombia’s forgotten prisoners
Along with dozens of other female political prisoners, campesino leader Luz Perly Córdoba lives behind bars in the Bogotá women’s prison, »El Buen Pastor«. They are forced to sleep in the dirt of the floor, and their babies will grow up in confinement.
20.04.2004 (By Alfredo Castro, ANNCOL) “These women live each day as if it were their last” says journalist Sara Cifuentes of the Colombian weekly VOZ.
Cifuentes follows the desperate situation of the women imprisoned in the “Buen Pastor” prison closely. The women lack milk, towels, linen and toys for their children. They sleep bundled together on the floor.
According to Cifuentes, “they are an example of tenacity, valor and solidarity. They preserve for themselves and for their children the hope that the world can be made better, even though it today denies them milk, linen and medicine for their babies.”
84 women are confined in Yard Six of the “Buen Pastor” – “The Good Shepherd” in English. Of these 84, 54 are accused of various crimes such as rebellion and terrorism, and only 29 have been convicted – ten to terms between 16 and 40 years. The remainder have not been judged guilty, but remain detained, many together with their small children.
Several are victims of so called “miraculous fishing expeditions”, massive detentions carried out by the Armed Forces with the objective of capturing opponents of the regime.
One of the prisoners is Luz Perly Córdoba (photo), a leader of the National Trade Union Federation of Rural Workers, FENSUAGRO. Known as an energetic defender of peasant rights, she is now imprisoned, accused of rebellion.
In a letter sent to ANNCOL from The Good Shepherd, she writes: “Today, there are hundreds of leaders from the rural workers’ movement and other popular movements who, like me, are denied their liberty, torn from their families and their communities, accused of rebellion. This is the product of the intolerance of a regime which has taken to demonizing and stigmatizing as rebels all those who dare to differ and to dissent from their unacceptable social and economic policies.”
She adds that, despite the persecution, “we will not renounce our struggle and our dreams, which are more alive today than ever.”
Two women share each of the cells of Yard Six in the women’s prison, one sleeping on the floor and the other on the bunk. There are six mothers with babies between two and nine months old, and one with a girl of three years.
”But the circumstances are more difficult than one would think”, explains Sara Cifuentes.
“Of the 84 prisoners, 63 are single parents. There are 20 women with one child, 17 with two children, 11 with three, nine with four and three with five.”
======================================================================= Family of Coke worker machine gunned A Colombian death squad struck at the family of a Coca-Cola union leader, killing three and wounding two kids. 21.04.2004 (By Maria Engqvist, ANNCOL) At 7 am on April 20, various armed men with machine guns entered the home of the brother of Coca-Cola union leader Efrain Guerrero's wife in Bucaramanga, and fired indiscriminately at the family.
Guerrerro's brother-in-law, Gabriel Remolina was shot dead together with his wife Fanny and three of their children were wounded. One of these children, Robinson Remolina, was brought to the hospital in grave condition, and died on Wednesday morning.
Shortly before the killings, lawyers contracted by the Coke workers had announced that they had filed a case against Coca-Cola in the United States, for acts of anti-union violence in Colombia.
President of Sinaltrainal, (the National Food Industry Workers Union) Luis Javier Correa said that this is not the first time that the families of union leaders have been the victims of such http://www.anncol.org/side/330">violence.
”This happened in the context of the labor conflict against Coca Cola, where we are trying to avoid the firing of workers due to closing production lines,” Correa said.
A group of 91 workers—nearly three-fourths union leaders—was dismissed in February after Coca-Cola closed several plants. After a union-led hunger strike in March, Coke agreed to negotiate a transfer of the union members slated for layoff.
During the protest, group affiliated with the country’s most notorious paramilitaries, the army-backed AUC, released a statement declaring war on the union leaders and promising to “finish them all off” if they do not leave the country in three months.
”We also just had a meeting with the Vice President of the Coca-Cola bottlers where we expressed our concern for the security problems,” Correa said.
Kidnapped the son of a unionist
Paramilitaries acting with at least tacit approval of Colombian Coca-Cola officials are suspected in the murder of seven Coca-Cola unionists in recent years and the kidnapping and torture of others. About 3,600 Colombian union members have been killed in the last two decades, at the hands of right-wing paramilitaries and security forces.
In December 2003 paramilitaries arrived at the home of Sinaltrainal union leader Rafael Carvajal in Cúcuta and threatened that they would assassinate his family if he did not turn down his complaints against the soft drink giant, who had unjustly suspended him from his work contract several times.
On the same day the son of national Sinaltrainal President Javier Correa was kidnapped in Bucaramanga, but was later released.
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