ASSASSINATIONS OF WORKERS UNETHICAL, UNSUSTAINABLE WATER USE

SALE OF TOXIC WASTE AS FERTILISER

Isidro Segundo Gil worked at Coca-cola bottling plant in Carepa in the far north Uraba region of Antioquia department in Colombia, towards the border with Panama. Isidro was assassinated inside the Carepa plant at 9am on 5th December 1996. He was a leader of the local branch of the food and drink workers union SINALTRAINAL which had one week earlier tabled the union's demands in the annual negotiation round with the bottling company. He was shot dead by right-wing paramilitaries, the fourth union member at the carepa plant they had assassinated since 1994. Plant manager Ariosto Mosquera stated shortly beforehand he wanted to 'sweep away the trade union'. After murdering Isidro the paramilitaries burnt out the local union office and took possession of it. Two days later they re-entered the plant, called the workers together and made them sign prepared letters resigning from the union, the rest of the local union leaders were given three days to get out of town. According to eye witnesses the letters had been printed on company machines and were collected in by the management. The union branch was indeed decimated, in all fourteen activists and their families had to flee Carepa, over thirty members resigned from the union. Technical manager of the plant and union member, 65 year old Jose Herrera was forced out of the plant and assassinated by paramilitaries on 26th December 1996 and, after a four year battle to get justice for her murdered partner, Isidro's wife Alcira del Carmen Herera Perez was murdered in front of their daughters. The Carepa plant was run by Bebidas y Alimentos, a US company owned by the Kirby family based in Key Biscayne, Florida...In all nine workers have been assassinated, three local leaders of SINALTRAINAL at the Bucaramanga bottling plant were imprisoned for six months under false charges of terrorism, union activists as the plant in Cucuta have suffered a series of shootings, beatings, kidnappings and intimidations, and local leaders in Barrabcabermeja have been the target of threats and assassination attempts by the main paramilitary group the AUC. Increasingly it is family members who are the victims, as in the attempted kidnapping of a 4 year old daughter of one union leader, the actual kidnapping of the 15 year old son of another, and then om 20th April 2004 the assassination of the brother-in-law, sister-in-law and nephew of another.

Taken from The Anti-Coke Manifesto put together by Colombia Solidarity Campaign