WAKE UP! WAKE UP! IT'S YER FROTHY... SchNEWS
CROAKER COLA
Del-Boy would have been proud. Stick some tap water in a fancy
bottle, give it a poncy name, brag about the "highly sophisticated
purification process" based on Nasa spacecraft technology and then
sell it back to the public with an astronomical mark-up! But in
true Trotter style the scam seriously back-fired for Coca-Cola
last week when its entire UK supply of Dasani water was pulled off
the shelves because it has been contaminated with bromate, a
cancer-causing chemical.

But while in the UK Coke are just busy ripping off their customers
and encouraging people to drink a can which contains six
sugarcubes, across the world their fizzy pop actions are a lot
more life and death.

Colombia is not the place to be if you are a trade unionist - over
3,000 have been murdered since 1987 - eight of those trade
unionists were working at Coke bottling plants. One of them Isidro
Segundo Gil was killed inside a Coke bottling plant and his wife
murdered by the paramilitaries for campaigning for justice. These
Colombian bottlers are now part of a legal action in the US under
the Alien Tort Claims Act, which accuses the company of
collaborating or hiring paramilitaries to murder, torture kidnap
and disappear Coca Cola workers and trade unionists.

Last September Coca-Cola's largest Colombian bottler, closed the
production lines at 11 of their 16 plants and launched a new
offensive against union-affiliated workers in an effort to break
support for the food and drink workers union, Sinaltrainal. The
company imprisoned workers by force in factories or hotels and
pressured them to renounce their employment contracts in return
for a measly payout. Then the bottlers suddenly sacked 91 workers
from their plants, 70% of whom are union organisers.

So twelve days ago to try to draw world attention to the situation
30 of these sacked workers began a hunger strike in front of six
Coke bottling plants. One of them Juan Carlos Galvis, vice
president of the local union said, "If we lose the fight against
Coca-Cola, we will first lose our union, next our jobs, and then
our lives." He should know. Last August there was an assassination
attempt against him, and just a few months ago, in December, his
brother-in-law was brutally murdered in an incident that many
human rights groups have linked to anti-union thugs. Just a week
into the protest and strikers are already being threatened by the
paramilitary who issued a statement declaring "They must leave or
they will become a military target and we will finish them off."

Coke of Secrecy

Insufficient rains for the past three years has pushed the state
of Kerala in India to a severe drought-like situation. Reports
from across the state say that the water levels in reservoirs are
going down fast, crops are perishing and towns and villages have
been hit by drinking water scarcity. So what are the caring
Coca-Cola Company that "exists to benefit and refresh everyone it
touches" doing? Sucking peoples water dry so they can produce
their sugary crap of course.

Coke have been the focus of protests across India for the past few
years. In Plachimada in the state of Kerla the company arrived
three years ago, building a plant in the middle of fertile
agricultural land because it had plentiful supplies of
groundwater. But it wasn't long before problems began. Farmers
living nearby began noticing changes in the quantity and quality
of well water. Water from a well in the village of Plachimada
became unfit for drinking, cooking and bathing with a district
medical officer eventually telling the villagers their water was
now toxic. Crop yields began to plummet. The water scarcity
eventually hit Coke. Until recently, the company was drawing 1.5
million litres a day from the common groundwater resource - then
it is only able to extract 800,000 litres - the remainder being
brought in by truck from borewells from neighbouring villages. Fed
up with this people recently blocked two of these transporters and
instead distributed the water to local people and emptied the
remaining water into paddy fields!

But while complaints and requests to the company and Government
repeatedly fell on deaf ears locals began an indefinite picket (or
'agitation' as they call it) outside the factory gates demanding
its closure. So far they've been there for nearly seven hundred
days with over 300 arrests. Now due to the severe drought the
local authority has refused to renew the companies license to
operate. The vice-president of Coca-Cola India, Sunil Gupta said:
"We have a long-term commitment to the people of Kerala. We hope
the State Government would explore the possibility of finding a
solution to the present problem of water availability due to
deficient rain in the last couple of years." SchNEWS reckons that
solution would be for the company to stop stealing the peoples
water and bugger off out of India.

When you look at just two examples of how Coke are behaving across
the world you have to ask yourself - what would happen if any of
us did the same. Intimidating and shooting people who joined trade
unions, or stealing and contaminating peoples' water supply? But
then it's not people doing this but a powerful multinational whose
actions Medha Patkar, coordinator of the Indian National Alliance
of People's Movements says "are symbolic of the vulgar arrogance
and criminal power of corporations." Or as Joel Bakan put it in
his new book 'The corporation: the pathological pursuit of profit
and power' "As a psychopathic creature, the corporation can
neither recognise nor act upon moral reasons to refrain from
harming others. Nothing in its legal make-up limits what it can do
to others in pursuit of its selfish ends, and it is compelled to
cause harm when the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs." It's
up to people to make sure that the costs to these psychopaths make
it impossible for them to keep getting away with such behaviour.

For more about Colombia and the worldwide boycott campaign
www.killercoke.org For more on Indian protests
www.indiaresource.org


* Former Coke Chief Executive Roberto Goizueta defined the world
as ''Coke versus people who don't drink Coke yet.'' This sort of
expansionist megalomania has meant that the company has willingly
jumped into bed with anyone in order to expand its empire. One of
those was the Nazi regime, where Coke produced some impressive
adverts that for some reason are now hard to come by. So comedian
Mark Thomas has organised an exhibition to recreate Coke's Nazi
adverts in May at the Nancy Victor Gallery, 36 Charlotte Street,
London W1T 2NA and at The Foundry, near Old Street Tube. Anyone is
welcome to submit artwork www.mtcp.co.uk/coca-cola