Скачать или смотреть Colombian workers suing Coca-Cola for alleged human rights abuses

(19 Jul 2001)

1. Various of presser
2. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Edgar Paez, union worker
"We will present to federal court in Florida a lawsuit against Coca-Cola for the violation of the human rights of its workers in Colombia and various crimes that they have committed against their leaders. They are crimes that the leaders of Coca-Cola have committed during many years, and they have done so with impunity. What we want is for the truth to come out, that there be justice and reparation. The lawsuit which will be filed tomorrow in the U-S will deal with this as there is no justice in Colombia and that has allowed them to get away with these crimes."
3. Cutaway
4. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Israel Vargas, Lawyer
"In regards to the politics of Coca-Cola there has been a policy of fierce repression. They have used various methods in violation of human rights such as arbitrary detentions, forcible disappearances, homicide, torture, to generate terror in the factories. Curiously, these acts would happen just when there would be negotiations with the unions. "
5. Various cutaways
6. SOUNDBITE: (Spanish) Pedro Maecha, Lawyer
" We think that no company cannot consult the international standards of human rights which require a minimum standard in regards to liberty and respect of the life and dignity of humans. This petition is sincere and objective."
7. Various Coca-cola ads

STORYLINE:

A Colombian union will file a lawsuit in U-S federal court against the Coca-Cola Company and affiliated bottling companies, alleging direct or indirect responsibility in human rights violations.

Coca-Cola immediately dismissed the lawsuit, which claims that the companies who bottle its products in Colombia have ties to right-wing paramilitary groups responsible for assassinations of union members.

The main plaintiff in the case, to be filed on Friday in U.S. Federal District Court in Miami, is SINALTRAINAL - a union representing 2,300 food workers including 500 employees at local plants where Coca-Cola is bottled.

The United Steelworkers of America is backing the case and providing a lawyer.

In a 66-page complaint presented at a news conference in Bogota, SINALTRAINAL alleges that Coca-Cola bears indirect responsibility for the killing of Isidro Segundo Gil, a union leader shot to death on December 5, 1995 at the entrance of a bottling plant in the northern town of Carepa.

The plaintiffs will cite the Alien Tort Claims Act, a centuries-old law which allows foreigners to sue U-S companies for damages caused abroad.

Kovalick said plaintiffs will ask for millions of dollars in monetary damages.

Although the Coca-Cola Company does not own the bottling plants in Colombia, lawyers for the union say they have named the Atlanta-based soft drink giant because it "exercises considerable control" over the bottling franchises.

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