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CounterPunch
September
6, 2002
Colombia's War
on Unions
The Coca-Cola Killings
by Maria Engqvist
The Coca-Cola killings in Colombia continue. Last
week union activist Adolfo de Jesus Munera was murdered shortly
after he received notice that a law suit filed by him against
Coca-Cola was accepted by Colombia's Constitutional Court.
Adolfo de Jesus Munera was a regional
leader of the Sinaltrainal food industry workers' union and a
former employee of the Coca-Cola plant Embotelladora Roman in
the town of Barranquilla. Before Munera, seven other union leaders
from Coca-Cola plants in Colombia have been murdered and others
have been abducted and tortured. The attacks against the union
activists are usually accompanied by threats to all Coca-Cola
employees to quit their union.
Coca-Cola had a long history of controversy
with Adolfo de Jesus Munera. In April 1997 the company's plant
chief Emilio Hernandez secretly requested the Colombian authorities
to take action against Munera accusing him of being a rebel sympathizer.
After an army unit raided Munera's home in Barranquilla, he fled
out of town afraid of being targeted by right-wing death squads.
The following month he received a letter from Coca-Cola saying
that he was dismissed for not showing up at his workplace.
Supported by his union Munera filed a
law suit against Coca-Cola demanding to be reinstated in his
job. Munera won in the first instance, but at a higher level
the company's arguments were accepted by the judge. Munera, however,
appealed and on August 22nd he received a letter from the Colombian
Constitutional Court saying that his case had been accepted.
On August 31st. unknown gunmen where waiting for him outside
his mother's house and shot him dead on the doorsteps.
Sinaltrainal leadership blamed the Colombian
state for the killing of Munera and was backed up by the Director
of the Human Rights department of the national union federation
CUT, Domingo Tovar. In a statement received by ANNCOL, Tovar
said that the killing of Munera once again illustrates "the
price that union leaders are paying for demanding social justice".
Almost 4.000 CUT union activists have
been assassinated since 1986, without the Colombian authorities
taking serious steps to prosecute the killers.
The Sinaltrainal union has previously
filed another law suit in Atlanta, USA against Coca-Cola saying
that the company has contracted death squads to carry out a campaign
to destroy the union. The Sinaltrainal leadership says that there
is no possibility to bring those responsible for the killings
to justice in Colombia, because the death squads are being run
by powerful members of the elite and senior police and army commanders.
Earlier this year, Sinaltrainal attorney
Pedro Mahecha Avila told US media that: "the evidence of
state complicity includes not only the impunity with which crimes
are committed, but also the use of the military and courts to
harass the union with unwarranted searches and false charges."
Maria Engqvist
lives in Stockholm, where she writes for ANNCOL.
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