Solidarity with Coca-Cola workers
Int'l caravan backs Colombian union
By Heather Cottin
The Colombian Coca-Cola workers' union,
SINALTRAINAL, has called for an international caravan to travel
to Colombia in solidarity with the union movement there. In
response to this call, the International Caravan to Save the
Lives of Colombian Workers will take place from June 20 to June
30.
The message is urgent. SINALTRAI NAL is calling on activists
from all over the world to come to the support of workers in
Colombia.
"In order to continue living and constructing new dawns for
our Colombia, it is necessary that the international union
movement, human-rights organizations, social organizations and
democratic personalities visit the country and share with us
this harsh reality," says the union's statement.
All who attempt to organize in Colom bia are under threat,
from teachers to human-rights activists, industrial workers to
petroleum workers.
From the United States, members of the International Action
Center will join activists from United Students Against
Sweatshops and the Committee for Social Justice in Colombia on
this voyage of solidarity. The International Caravan will also
include activists from Australia and Ireland.
All will bear witness to the paramilitaries' crimes all over
Colombia. In addition, the delegation will accompany pro
testing workers at occupied factories in Medellin, visit urban
youth in Cali and see an environmental project in
Bogotá.
Teresa Gutierrez, co-director of the International Action
Center and national coordinator of its Colombia Project, is
organizing activists to join the caravan. Gutierrez told
Workers World, "The IAC is calling on the religious, labor and
student communities to contribute to a fundraising campaign to
support the SINALTRAINAL union."
Colombian workers have faced Coca-Cola, British Petroleum,
Nestlé, Occi dental Petroleum, and the many other
multinationals that have privatized and looted the country. In
the pay of these multinationals, Colombian paramilitaries and
death squads oppose workers' right to organize.
Official Colombian government policy threatens union
activists. In April, a strike in Colombia's oil industry was
declared an act of "terrorism" by the U.S.-backed Uribe
government. The Colombian govern ment placed legal sanctions on
the 5,500-member union, arrested strike leaders, and has
threatened military force to bust the strike. Death threats
have been made against striking workers.
In the past five years, police and paramilitary death squads
in Colombia have assassinated over 3,800 union activists,
according to the Web site www.killercoke.org. The union
movement declares that it is being "increasingly battered and
in the process of being annihilated for the benefit of the
state, the multinationals and the national monopolies."
Gutierrez says: "Labor activists in Colombia, as well as
women, students, campesinos and all popular sectors, face a
dire situation. Their struggle for justice is part of the
anti-globalization and anti-FTAA struggle and should be
earnestly supported by the solidarity movement. This is also
part of the struggle against Plan Colombia, which is the
military wing of the Free Trade Area of the Americas.
"The Bush administration is every day militarizing Colombia,
not only to attack the movements in Colombia, but also to
threaten Venezuela and revolutionary Cuba.
"People need to think about going to Colombia. If they can't
go themselves, they should try to have resolutions passed in
their unions supporting struggling workers in Colombia. Unions
should send messages of solidarity and contribute to the IAC's
SINALTRAINAL Solidarity Campaign."
Reprinted from the May 13, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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