Coke
Libel Suit Goes Flat
Colombia’s Attorney General’s office has invalidated libel charges brought by local Coca-Cola bottling companies Panamco Colombia S.A. and Embotelladora Santander S.A. against the National Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL).
08.03.2004 (By SINALTRAINAL) Along with supporters in the United States, the union brought a suit against the Coca-Cola Company and its Colombian affiliates in 2001 for murders and other crimes against union members by paramilitaries who the union says were in the companies’ pay.
The Attorney General’s office investigated the companies’ complaint against SINALTRAINAL but ultimately ruled that lawsuits for damages could not be considered libels.
A number of local and foreign organizations began a boycott of Coca-Cola on July 22, 2003, a date which the 2003 World Social Forum declared the “World Day Against Coca-Cola.”
Threats against SINALTRAINAL members continue. On January 28, heavily armed men in a green truck and two others on a motorcycle arrived at the union headquarters in Santa Marta, Magdalena department, and asked the guard for Coca-Cola worker and SINALTRAINAL section president Germán Catano. The guard answered that Catano and the other unions were away from the office.
The union is also concerned for the safety of José Polo Lambraño; Polo is a witness in the case of Coca-Cola worker Adolfo de Jesús Munera López, who was murdered in Barranquilla, Atlántico department, on August 31, 2002. A suspect in the case, Adolfo Hicky Charrys Cantillo, was arrested in January.
On February 16, Yesid Escobar, the president of the Municipal Workers Union (SINTRAMUNICIPIO) in Bugalagrande, Valle del Cauca, received a death threat just days after both SINTRAMUNICIPIO and SINALTRAINAL members testified to a commission led by a New York City Councilmember to investigate labor abuses in Colombia.
Translation by International Labor Rights Fund
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