Coca-Cola Alert:
Corporate Militarism in Colombia on the Rise

TAKE ACTION to demand the immediate release of former Coca-Cola bottle worker and union president, Alfredo Porras Rueda!

SEND LETTERS to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez, Vice President Francisco Santos, and Minister of the Interior Fernando Londono Hoyos - addresses listed below.

Former Union President Kidnapped

On December 31, 2002, Alfredo Porras Rueda was detained by the Columbian government. In a televised statement hours later, General Jairo Duvan Pineda, commander of the Fifth Division of the Colombian Army, accused Rueda of being a member and ideologue of the insurgent group Ejercito de Liberación Nacional (ELN).

Rueda worked at Coca-Cola's bottling plant in Bucaramanga, and was President of the local SINALTRAINAL union - National Food Industry Workers Union. He was forced to leave amid numerous death threats and assassination attempts triggered by false accusations made by Coca-Cola management against him and the food workers' union. Corporate representatives have repeatedly accused workers of organizing with insurgent groups simply because of workers' struggle for their rights.

Rueda was not the first Colombian Coca-Cola worker to face intense harassment and persecution. On August 31, 2002, Adolfo de Jesus Munera - also a Coca-Cola employee and President of the SINALTRAINAL local in the town of Barranquilla - was murdered. Local law enforcement officials have still not launched an investigation into the case.

According to SINALTRAINAL's national leadership, both instances highlight the persecution of social activists and the criminalization of social and labor protest. Coca-Cola and the Colombian Government must be held responsible for these criminal partnerships.

SINALTRAINAL is asking human rights and social justice organizations, as well as everyone in support of workers' rights, to write the Colombian Government and demand:

• the immediate release of Alfredo Porras Rueda
• an end to harassment and persecution of workers and union leaders
• an investigation into Coca-Cola management's role in the death of Adolfo de Jesus Munera.

Background to the Struggle

SINALTRAINAL has been the victim of a systematic campaign of destruction, which has included: the assassination of 14 union leaders, half of which worked at various Coca-Cola plants; death threats; forced displacements; the incarceration of workers and union leaders on false charges; raids of union offices, cooperatives and union members' homes; union de-certification; extortion and kidnapping of union members in order to force them to renounce their right to association; and the violation of collective agreements. In addition, hundreds of workers have been fired from their jobs over the past decade. As a result, SINALTRAINAL has seen its membership decrease by over fifty percent.

The Colombian state has been an accomplice to the actions of the transnational corporations, by neither investigating nor punishing those responsible for carrying out these crimes. It continues to promote policies that heighten terror and poverty via the privatization of public sector companies and the creation of "free-trade" zones.

According to the Colombia trade union confederation, CUT, 148 unionists were killed in Columbia in 2002. Of these, 42 were leaders, including five national union presidents.

Write the Colombian Government and demand that they stop their policies of corporate militarism!

President of the Republic of Colombia
Dr. Alvaro Uribe Velez
Palacio de Narino
Carrera 8 No. 7-26
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
auribe@presidencia.gov.co / rdh@presidencia.gov.co

Vice President of the Republic of Colombia
Francisco Santos
Consejeria Presidential de Derechos Humanos
Calle 7, No. 654, Piso 3
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
infprotocol@mindefensa.gov.co

Minister of the Interior and Justice
Fernando Londono Hoyos
Ministerio del Interior y Justicia
Palacio Echeverry, Carrera 8a, No. 8-09, Piso 2o
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
mininterior@myrealbox.com

For more information, visit the following websites:
U.S./Labor Education in the Americas Project
www.usleap.org/Colombia/ColombiaHome.html

Coke Watch
www.cokewatch.org

ActionLA
www.peacenowar.net/#colombia

Information in this alert was provided by the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (UK) ahigginbottom@blueyonder.co.uk