Coca Cola Photogaphy: Kevin Wilkins

At four thirty on Thursday the 18th of October the elected representatives of Union Council, the Union's highest democratic body, voted unanimously to boycott Coca-Cola products from the Student’s Union and to investigate ethical alternatives.

So ended a campaign by an alliance of students, a campaign that was well into its third year and had secured over a thousand student signatures in its first year alone. The call for a boycott came in response to human rights atrocities carried out by the Coca-Cola Corporation across the world, but particularly in Columbia and India.

The Latin American country of Columbia is, according to NGO’s War on Want, the most dangerous country for trade unionists and human rights activists in the world. Columbia is a nation notorious for terrorism, drugs trafficking and its right wing military government.

In June 2003 Isidro Segundo Gil was dragged across the factory floor of the Coca-Cola bottling plant where he worked before being brutally executed in front of his colleagues. His only crime was to campaign for fair pay and tolerable work conditions in his role as elected trade union leader.

One week later his wife, Alcira Gil, was taken from her home and also murdered. Since Gil’s murder armed militia, in the direct pay of Coca-Cola, have maintained a bloody campaign of terror, intimidation, kidnap, torture and murder.

To date hundreds of Columbian workers have been murdered merely because they dared to struggle for fair wages, living standards, and their basic human rights. Perhaps the most appalling nature of these murders is the fact that they were not perpetrated by faceless terrorists, but by the Coca-Cola Corporation, whose products and logo are worldwide brands, a household brand familiar to us all.

Coca-Cola’s crimes are not isolated to Columbia alone. Similar union busting tactics have been carried out across the globe in countries such as Nicaragua, Venezuela, Russia, Turkey and India. Indeed India presents another appalling case study of blatant human rights abuses being carried out by multinational corporations, who view themselves as being above law or basic humanity. Sprawling bottling plants in rural India drain vast quantities of water, the region's most valuable resource.

This has subsequently led to crop failure, famine and potential starvation for thousands. Farmers have been forced to bore deeper for desperately needed water that is often riddled with pollutants. Furthermore Coca-Cola factories have been distributing what they claim to be fertiliser to local farmers; in reality it is a lead based and highly toxic waste.

The Centre for Science and Environment based in Deli found that that the fertiliser had thirty times the amount of pesticide permitted by European regulations, and could lead to cancer and the break down of the immune system. The circulation of such poisonous material has led to alarming health problems for regions in the sub-continent where medical care is scarce at best, non-existent as normality.

The strength of the campaign to boycott Coca-Cola was epitomised by Michelle Avery, a recently gradated student of history who was involved in the campaign from the beginning. As Ms Avery states “this is an ethical not a political issue and so has the potential to bring different groups of students together.”

The move to disassociate from Coca-Cola is not a campaign unique to Portsmouth. Over twenty universities across the country have, or are in the process of boycotting. The most recent victories have come in Cardiff, Manchester and Trinity Collage, Dublin. This in turn is part of a global initiative that has witnessed boycotts take place as far a field as Australia, Germany, the United States and India

This campaign sends out a strong message to corporations such as Coca-Cola, that students are no longer going to accept profit being placed before people.

As students in Portsmouth we are free to stand up, without being shot down, to speak out without being silenced. Yet far too often we stay silent and it is in our silence that we are complicit. Do not spurn this freedom. Ignorance and silence may go hand in hand, but to know and to stay silent, that is perhaps the greatest crime of all.

If you’d like more information on the human rights abuses perpetrated by Coca-Cola and other multi-national corporations log on to the War on Want Website.

Alternatively if you’ve got an opinion on the boycott, go to the forum on UPSU.net or contact Ben Norman (UPSU Student Activites and Development Officer) at:

studentactivitiesofficer@upsu.net

Comments have been closed for this article

 

 

This sounds retarded, what the F**K??? What students voted for this Boycott? They should be sent back to the planet they came from

Mon, 05 Nov 2007

 

 

To anonymous, above, might I recommend you read this response on the matter: 
http://www.upsu.net/forums/v/message,3,4134.htm#4134 
 
Best regards,

Alex Harries - Mon, 05 Nov 2007