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http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/business/coke/0602/06colombia.htmlhttp://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/business/coke/0602/06colombia.html
Murder in Colombia puts Coca-Cola in court battle
By SUSAN FERRISS
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia -- Nobody disagrees that on Dec. 5, 1996, gunmen walked into a Coca-Cola bottling plant in this South American country, asked for union leader Isidro Gil and promptly shot him dead.
Nobody disputes that Colombia's right-wing paramilitary squads kill with impunity in some cities and may have kidnapped and threatened other labor activists at Coke bottling plants.
But there is strong disagreement over whether the Coca-Cola Co. and some of its bottling partners should be held liable for these crimes.
Today, a U.S. District Court judge in Miami is expected to hear initial arguments in four unusual lawsuits filed against the Atlanta-based beverage giant by a small, embattled labor union in Colombia, one of Latin America's most violent and politically tumultuous countries.
The judge is to decide whether to let a trial linking all the lawsuits proceed.
A key point of contention in the suits is whether local managers working for Coke and its bottling partners deliberately allowed or encouraged rightist gunmen to harass and kill union members.
"We want justice. We want people to know the truth about what is going on in Colombia against Coke workers. We want reparation for the victims of all these crimes," said Javier Correa, the Bogota-based president of the National Union of Food Industry Workers, five of whose leaders have been killed since 1994.
"Why are we doing the lawsuit in the United States? Because all of these cases, without exception, are known to the Colombian justice system, and all we've seen is total impunity," said Correa, who added that nobody has been prosecuted for any killings or harassment of the workers.
The union is represented in the United States by lawyers from the Pittsburgh-based United Steelworkers of America and a Washington-based nonprofit group called the International Labor Rights Fund.
The union's lawyers said U.S. law allows foreigners to seek redress from U.S. companies that operate abroad.
Rodrigo Calderon, a Coca-Cola executive based in Mexico, said the lawsuits contained "outrageous allegations" designed to grab headlines and promote "a political agenda."
Coke has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuits.
"What we're saying is, this is very tragic," Calderon said, "but the company and the bottlers had nothing to do with these attacks."
The Coke Colombia case already has stirred some attention in the United States. Members of the Teamsters union, which is involved in the lawsuits, protested in April at Coca-Cola's annual meeting.
The Teamsters also have seized the opportunity to criticize the company on unrelated issues, including complaints about working conditions at Coke plants elsewhere.
Payoffs for protection
Coke's Calderon said that because of the killing of employees, burning of trucks and extortion by Colombia's left-wing armed groups, Coca-Cola distributors have dropped 3 percent of their buyers and are unable to operate in more than 80 municipalities in Colombia.
People familiar with Coke's operations in Colombia said employees have met with right-wing paramilitary groups, hoping to keep them from demanding protection pay- ments.
It is widely known that in some areas of Colombia, illegal armed groups exert control because of an absence of effective local government and police.
The lawsuit in connection with the killing of Gil names Richard Kirby, the American owner of a bottling plant in Carepa, in northern Colombia, where the union leader was killed in 1996. The lawsuit alleges, in detail, that Kirby's plant manager at the time consorted with gunmen prior to the murder and made public comments that the gunmen would wipe out the union.
"I don't know if we met or not with them," Calderon said of Coke employees and right-wing paramilitary groups. But he said Coca-Cola had not negotiated with any factions in Colombia's war.
James McDonald, an attorney for Kirby, who lives in Key Biscayne, Fla., and Bogota, said, "Everyone recognizes the lawlessness in some parts of Colombia. Does that mean that Coke et al. are responsible for the violence perpetrated? I think that's a stretch. . . . The bottom line is, we deny these allegations."
The suit stemming from Gil's slaying seeks compensation for his children, who now live in hiding with relatives because their mother also was killed -- by paramilitary gunmen, union leaders suspect.
Trade unionists targeted
In Colombia, a country mired in civil war, more union activists are killed than in any other part of the world, according to the AFL-CIO. More than 1,500 Colombian trade unionists have been killed over the past 10 years.
Trade unionists are a frequent target of Colombia's outlawed right-wing paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces, known as the AUC, its Spanish initials.
Using profits from its participation in Colombia's cocaine trade, the AUC hires mercenaries to kill or threaten those it believes sympathize with the left-wing guerrilla armies, human rights groups say.
Fighters from both sides are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
The union claims that it sent a letter to Kirby and Coca-Cola about two months before Gil's killing -- pleading that the threats be ended. The union said the company ignored the letter.
Calderon said Coke was unaware of such a document, a copy of which was submitted to the U.S. court.
"The compelling question is, why doesn't Coca-Cola intervene to stop the violence?" said Terry Collingsworth, an attorney with the International Labor Rights Fund.
"Coca-Cola, like many companies, is trying to have it both ways -- they control the product and reap the profit, but they claim to have no responsibilities to the workers," he said.
Juan Carlos Galvis, a union activist who also has filed suit, said in an interview that because he has received so many death threats, he is under constant guard by federal agents in the city where he lives, Barrancabermeja.
Police and military officials interviewed in Barrancabermeja admit that AUC gunmen kill suspected leftist sympathizers in the city.
"Every day it's more tense. I just got permission to use an armored car," said Galvis, who is suing Coke and Panamerican Beverages, a bottler that operates in a number of Latin American countries.
Coke owns 25 percent of Panamerican Beverages.
Luis Adolfo Cardona, a Colombian bottling worker who witnessed Gil's murder, is now living in Washington under an AFL-CIO program offering temporary refuge to threatened Colombian trade unionists.
Cardona said the men who shot Gil had been inside the factory before.
"They are the same men who grabbed me on the street the same day they killed Isidro," Cardona said.
Fearing for his life, Cardona broke away from the men and ran into a police station. He and his family fled the area under Colombian government protection.
Cardona said local managers, not Kirby, seemed to run the business in Carepa.
"What they wanted most of all," he said, "was to get rid of the union."
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