In his viewpoint Coke killers miss the mark (01/06/2006), Mark Kuehn argues that criticism directed at the Coca-Cola Company for the alleged abuse (including allegations of murder) of workers and union leaders in Coca-Coca bottling plants in Colombia is misdirected because these plants are not directly owned by Coca-Cola.

What is the relationship of Coca-Cola to these allegations? There is a news report from July 20, 2001, filed by Jim Lobe of the news agency Inter Press Service (IPS), which seems relevant. (The full text of this fascinating report from IPS is available online at: www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0720-01.htm)

Lobe writes that, in a lawsuit in Miami against Coca-Cola for killing union leaders at the Carepa bottling plant in Colombia, the plaintiffs have charged Coca-Cola with failing to prevent its bottler from bringing in death squads. According to IPS, the bottling companies themselves - Bebidas y Alimentos and Miami-based Panamco - are also named as defendants in this lawsuit. On May 6, 2003, Panamco was acquired by the company Coca-Cola FEMSA, according to a report on FEMSA's website.

The IPS newsreport says that "at the Carepa bottling plant - paramilitary forces murdered two activists in April 1994 and then were invited by management at Bebidos y Alimentos to come onto the premises to threaten other members of the local SINALTRAINAL (the workers' union) leadership - Management hired members of the paramilitaries - They carried out a campaign of intimidation that included death threats against specific board members and culminated in the murder inside the plant of Isidro Segundo Gil in Dec. 1996."

Dan Kovalik, a lawyer, is quoted in the report as stating that the union had repeatedly asked Coca-Cola Colombia and the bottling company's management for protection, but that "Coke did nothing." In all these cases, according to Terry Collingsworth, another lawyer quoted in the IPS report, the bottlers effectively acted as Coca-Cola's agent due to the degree of control that Coca-Cola exercised over their operations under the bottling contract. "We are confident that if any of these plants make a mistake in applying Coca-Cola's formula or in delivering Coke, (Coke) would be there to correct it," Kovalik is quoted as saying, "but in cases where they kill union leaders, they do nothing."

It is noteworthy that, in Coca-Cola's negotiations concerning the suggestion by a multi-university consortium of which the University is a part that Coca-Cola be independently investigated, Coca-Cola has sought that nothing uncovered in the independent investigation be used against Coca Cola in the ongoing lawsuit against the company.

An analogy might help to understand the University's response. When a University defensive tackle was suspected of indecent exposure more than a year ago, this suspicion was universally held by the University to be damaging enough to its reputation that the tackle was dropped from the team, even while investigations were ongoing. His case was brought to trial only recently.

This was the right thing for the University to have done. Everyone, including Coca-Cola and the football player, has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty. But playing football for the University - or selling soda at the University - is a privilege and not a right. The University ought to revoke that privilege even if investigations or trials are continuing. In a Dec. 29 press release, the University stated: "Based upon Coca-Cola's inability to cooperate with a third-party, independent review of bottling plants in Colombia, the University is unable to resolve concerns about the company's compliance with (the University's own) Vendor Code of Conduct." In each case, the University found evidence that the suspected party (the defensive tackle and the Coca-Cola company) may have violated the University's code of conduct. As the University states in its press release, "the Dispute Review Board found evidence that Coca-Cola may have violated standards of the University's Vendor Code of Conduct." Under the circumstances, I do not think the University had any ethical choice but to suspend the contract, just as it had no choice but to suspend the football player.

Bhattacharyya is a Rackham student.