Colombian union sues Coca-Cola for death squad links. Genoa-G8 paramilitaries?

The USA-Latin American death squads below are moving into Europe, too. Into Genoa, Italy. This is the real face of globalization. Fair trade should not give more power to paramilitaries, death squads, and unelected world bodies.

-----------------------

Colombian union sues Coca-Cola for death squad links.
July 20, 2001 Posted: 6:38 PM EDT (2238 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/americas/07/20/us.colombia.coca.cola.ap/index.html

MIAMI (AP) -- Coca-Cola Co.'s Colombian bottlers are working with death squads to kill, threaten and intimidate plant workers, a labor union charged in a federal lawsuit filed Friday in Miami.

Coca-Cola, which is named as a defendant, immediately dismissed the racketeering lawsuit, which claims two bottling companies have ties to right-wing paramilitary groups believed responsible for assassinations of union members.

"The Coca-Cola Company does not own or operate any bottling plants in Colombia," spokesman Rafael Fernandez said by phone from company headquarters in Atlanta. "We deny any wrongdoing regarding human rights or any other unlawful activities in Colombia or anywhere else in the world."

Sinaltrainal, a union representing 2,300 food workers, including 500 Coke bottling plant employees, filed the suit along with the estate of a union leader killed in 1996 and current union leaders. The United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund are backing the lawsuit.

In a 66-page complaint issued at a news conference Thursday in Bogota, the Colombian capital, Sinaltrainal alleges that Coca-Cola bears indirect responsibility for the killing of Isidro Segundo Gil, who was shot to death at the entrance to a bottling plant in the northern town of Carepa.

The union claims Gil was killed by paramilitaries acting on orders from a plant manager and on behalf of the bottling company's owners.

The lawsuit was filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a centuries-old law allowing foreigners to sue U.S. companies for damages caused abroad.

Although Coca-Cola does not own the bottling plants in Colombia, lawyers for the union say they have named the soft drink giant as a defendant because it "exercises considerable control" over them and benefitted from labor repression. The bottling companies named in the suit are American-owned, the suit says.

Daniel Kovalik, a U.S. Steelworkers staff attorney, said the plaintiffs will ask for millions of dollars in damages, but he did not specify a figure.

The Washington-based labor rights group has filed similar lawsuits against Exxon Mobil for operations in Indonesia and Unocal in Myanmar.

CNN article ends.

============

=======

*Drug War, Death Squad LINKS worldwide. Revised. Huge LINKS list. Lists in alphabetical and chronological order. Other death squads, too. Such as the US-run Phoenix Program during the Vietnam war. Many other US-run death squads worldwide. Corruption at all levels of politics, police, society, government, etc..
http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/squads.htm and
http://members.fortunecity.com/multi19/squads.htm