Thursday morning leafleting with a friend, Thursday night he gets death threats

bristol | globalisation | news report Monday December 10, 2007 20:17 by Guayusa Andina and Guayabo Pastuso - Espacio Bristol-Colombia espaciobristol at redcolombia dot org

an urgent addition from Espacio Bristol-Colombia’s Guayusa and Guayabo

Please help make sure that our friends don’t end this month in a mass grave.
On Wednesday night, we stayed with our friend Luis Eduardo Garcia who is a member of the Colombian food-workers’ union, Sinaltrainal, and a worker in the Coca-Cola factory. At 5 o’clock on Thursday morning Guayabo went with Luis Eduardo and another member of Sinaltrainal, Jose Domingo Florez, to give out leaflets workers starting their shift, reminding them that that day, 6 December, was the eleventh anniversary of the murder union leader Isidro Gil, who was killed inside a Coke bottling plant during negotiations with the company.
We’ve just received news that that Thursday night, when Domingo got home, he found an envelope in his garage containing a death threat.

Leafleting outside the Coke plant on Thurs am

On Wednesday night, we stayed with our friend Luis Eduardo Garcia who is a member of the Colombian food-workers’ union, Sinaltrainal, and a worker in the Coca-Cola factory. At 5 o’clock on Thursday morning Guayabo went with Luis Eduardo and another member of Sinaltrainal, Jose Domingo Florez, to give out leaflets workers starting their shift, reminding them that that day, 6 December, was the eleventh anniversary of the murder union leader Isidro Gil, who was killed inside a Coke bottling plant during negotiations with the company.

We’ve just received news that that Thursday night, when Domingo got home, he found an envelope in his garage containing a death threat.

As many of you will know, Sinaltrainal launched a boycott of Coca-Cola in 2003 following the murder of eight unionized Coca-Cola workers - all during negotiations with the company. Threats against Coke workers continue and have becoming all the more frequent in the city of Bucaramanga where Luis Eduardo and Domingo are based.

This is the fifth threat this year against members of Sinaltrainal in Bucaramanga, who have been told that in December they will be killed and buried in a mass grave. On 10 February, Luis Eduardo and Jose Domingo and Sinaltrainal’s president Javier Correa received a threat, which was repeated a few weeks later. Then, on 26 July, Luis Eduardo and Javier received a further threat, which was repeated on 2 November.

It is unlikely to be a coincidence that Thursday’s threat followed the distribution of leaflets commemoration Isidro’s murder.

6 December was also the 79th anniversary of the massacre of more than 1000 banana workers employed by the United Fruit Company - immortalized in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s nobel prize-winning novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. United Fruit later became Chiquita Brands but the murders of workers didn’t stop and the company has admitted payments to right-wing paramilitary death squads. Later that same day, Luis Eduardo and Jose Domingo went on to take part in an act of commemoration for the murdered United Fruit Company and Chiquita Brands workers, where they presented a photo gallery of all the unionized Coca-Cola and Nestle workers who had been murdered. (For more info on allegations against Coke, Nestle and Chiquita Brands see the April 2006 entry of Guayusa’s blog www.vendidaver.blogspot.com)

The Christmas season is a particularly dangerous time for social and human rights activists in Colombia so please help protect our friends in Bucaramanga and make sure that the threat that they end up in a mass grave this December isn’t carried out by demanding that the Colombian state and Coca-Cola protect the lives of Sinaltrainal members, carry out a full investigation into these threats and guarantee the rights to free association and to organize in trade unions.

Please write to:

Presidencia de la República
Dr. Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Cra. 8 No..7-26, Palacio de Nariño, Santa fe de Bogotá,
Fax: (+57 1) 566.20.71
E-mail: auribe@presidencia.gov.co

Presidente de CocaCola
mail@na.cokecce.com
www.cokespotlight.org/flash/indexflash.html
www.cokewatch.org

Presidente Coca Cola FEMSA en Colombia
JUAN CARLOS JARAMILLO
Carrera 94 No. 42-94, Fontibón Bogotá, D. C.
Fax: (571) 4011687
E-mail: jarbelaez@panamco.com.co, cocacola@hotmail.com

Thank you. Guayusa and Guayabo, Espacio Bristol-Colombia

The July death threat

Thursday's commemoration of the banana workers