Socialist Action /October 2002
Coca-Cola Workers Murdered by Terror
Squads in Colombia
The following interview was done in Colombia by Joergen Hassler and
published in the Aug. 8 issue of Internationalen, the weekly newspaper of
the Socialist Party (Swedish section of the Fourth International, Socialist
Action's sister organization in Sweden), from which we have translated it.
 "Six of our comrades have been murdered
by paramilitaries at Coca Cola. Some were murdered right on the plant grounds.
The company's terror has crushed the union in half of its plants,"
said Edgar Paez, a food industry worker who worked 19 years in the Nestle
plant and is in the leadership of the food workers union Sinaltrainal.
"On Dec. 5, 1996, our comrade Isidro Segundo Gil was murdered at
the door of the plant in Carepa. After that another worker was murdered,
and the same night the paramilitaries burned down the union headquarters.
"Before they set fire to the headquarters they took away all the
office machinery. Their operation completely smashed the union local.
"After the attack threats have continued. Up until now, we have
collected information on threats against 70 workers by paramilitaries at
other Coca Cola plants.
"Five union comrades were jailed by the authorities.They sat in
jail for six months under the charge of inciting to rebellion. After they
were released, they were forced to flee; some of them were even obliged
to leave the country for a while."
The company claims that it has nothing to do with the persecution of
the trade unionists. But Paez pointed out, "It is totally absurd to
think that the paramilitaries are doing this on their own. In all the plants
you can find graffiti in the toilets that say, 'Guerrillas Out of Coca Cola.'
This is designed to frighten people, and it works.
Sinaltrainal has brought suit against Coca Cola in the United States.
"Coca Cola," said Paez, "has violated the right of collective
bargaining, the conventions of the International Labor Organization, the
laws of Colombia, and of course human rights. So, we are suing Coca Cola
in a court in Florida as well as in the Inter-American Court for Human Rights.
"At the same time we are organizing public tribunals to take up
the company's violations. The first was held in July in Atlanta, where Coca
Cola has its central office. The second will be in October in Brussels,
and a third in December in Bogota.
"Support is important. The pressure on our organization is very
severe. If we have a lot of people with us around the world, we are strengthened
in Colombia."
The mass movement in Colombia is working more and more with tribunals
in various places around the world. The reason is that the paramilitaries,
who, according to the human rights organizations are committing 70 to 80
percent of the violations, are operating with total impunity. "We set
up the first tribunal in Canada and Colombia after the massacre in Barrancabermeja,
where seven people were killed and 25 disappeared."
The tribunals are set up like courts.They become a sort of parallel system
of people's courts. "We heard witnesses and offered evidence,"
Paez reported, "and we could establish that the massacre was carried
out by paramilitaries with the help of members of the army.
"We know that members of the regular Colombian armed forces participated,
and so the authorities had to know that the massacre would take place, but
they did nothing to stop or it or to warn the people of the town."
The next tribunal was about the bombing of the town of Santo Domingo.
In this operation, a helicopter given by the United States to fight drug
smugglers was used to drop cluster bombs that killed 17 people, including
seven children, in December 1999.
"We held that tribunal in Chicago, where we presented evidence that
had been gathered by an organization of Vietnam veterans that supported
our campaign. And we were able to establish that the bombs were made in
the U.S. and that they were dropped by a helicopter given by the U.S."
According to Paez, this is evidence that the U.S. Plan Colombia, ostensibly
designed for fighting the drug traffic, is really designed to crush all
mass movements in the country. Up until now, 52 trade-union activists have
been murdered.
"Plan Colombia is a war plan, a plan for militarizing the country.
In the process, the unions are being broken, and that serves the interests
of the companies.
"When the union is gone, the company fires all the workers and hires
new ones without a contract and at lower wages. In that way, the multinationals
get cheap labor. That is the side of globalization we see.
"In the upcoming tribunals we will lay out all the cases in which
workers have been killed, or threatened, or subjected to illegal attacks.
We are going to show that Coca Cola has been involved in the persecution
of trade-union activists. At the same time, we will show how the multinationals
contribute to the conflict in Colombia, and how they benefit from the paramilitaries
and Plan Colombia.
"Sinaltrainal is also working more directly to help those who are
having a hard time in our country. We are doing a lot of work with violations
in the southern Bolivar and in San Lucas, in many places in Colombia with
great biodiversity. In these areas is the world's greatest diversity of
species per square meter and also the world's biggest gold mines.
In San Lucas there is Conquistador Mines, a Spanish corporation. "Gold
had traditionally been extracted by hand, so that some of the money remained
in the hands of local small farmers. Now the big corporation is starting
industrial operations that are harming millions, polluting the rivers.
"The local population is resisting the corporation's plans, and
they also are running into an offensive by the paramilitaries. The paramilitaries
came to the area with Conquestador. And the Colombian army carried out operations
in Bolivar in April and May, and that enabled the paramilitaries to set
up permanent bases in the area.
"The paramilitaries' offensive has been terrible. For example, the
chairman of the miners union was murdered. They cut off his head and played
football with it. After the murder, the peasants held big protests. They
even succeeded in getting an agreement with the government about how the
paramilitaries should be combated, and for getting social investment in
the area. After launching every offensive, the paramilitaries destroy schools,
burn crops, and wreck whole villages.
"But the government has not respected the agreement. The paramilitaries'
offensive has even been stepped up. The onslaught of the paramilitaries
and the army has been so destructive that last year we organized an international
humanitarian caravan. We made contact with cities in the United States and
Europe and in some Latin American countries also. In this way, we brought
72 foreigners who worked together with the social organizations and distributed
food.
"Today, communities in southern Bolivar have declared themselves
towns in rebellion. They have gone up into the mountains, because they are
denied the right to run their own region, to control the areas where they
live, denied their right to live. Rather than flee to other regions, they
go up into the mountains. When the paramilitaries withdraw, they go back
to their land.
"In the town of Mauecito, the inhabitants have been driven out three
times by the paramilitaries, but they are staying in their region. We supply
them with food and seed that is not genetically altered, with medicines
and tools.
"But during Operation Bolivar in April and May, the army destroyed
everything. They killed the mules, they killed the livestock, they destroyed
the crops, everything that the peasants had managed to build up. So, we
have to take them seed again."
Together with 120 other social organizations, Sinaltrainal has formed
a coalition called Colombia Demands Justice. It includes unions, peasant
organizations, Indian nations, cooperatives, and churches. "We are
fighting to save lives, to defend our human rights," Paez asserted.
"They are being constantly violated.
"The state must guarantee the right to life for all citizens, and
it is not doing that. And the Colombian state does not want to clear anything
up, because they are accomplices in the crimes. We have never been able
to get any information from the authorities about the 38,000 human rights
violations that occurred over 35 years, which we reported in Brussels in
1998.
"At the same time as fighting against the impunity of these crimes,we
are building social movements, because this impunity is used to break down
the organizations of the civil society.
"Without social movements," said Paez, "people cannot
express what they want for the future, what they wish for, what they dream
of. We know that despite the war and all the problems, the people can continue
to resist, fight, and organize themselves."
Socialist Action /October 2002 |