With signs that read, “Coca-Cola kills, you can’t hide your crimes in Colombia,” demonstrators from Students Against Sweatshops protested Wednesday in front of the Coca-Cola office in New York, in response to alleged acts of violence against workers in its bottling plants in Colombia Turkey, India, and Indonesia.

According to Luis Adolfo Cardona, representative of the Colombian food and beverage union, SINALTRAINAL, on December 5, 1996, paramilitaries presumably paid by the Coca-Cola bottling plant, killed Isidro Segundo Gil, the union secretary. Since then, union organizations in Colombia and the United States have accused Coca-Cola and Femsa, a Mexican organization that owns the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, of contracting paramilitaries to assassinate union members. The protesting organizations are promoting an international campaign, which includes a lawsuit in the United States against these two companies, in favor of worker protection and compensation to the families of the murdered union members.

Unions and students in the United States and other countries are undertaking a campaign under the slogan “Killer Coke” to raise awareness of the company’s labor practices and environmental and human rights violations. Several universities have stopped selling Coca-Cola products on their campuses.

In a statement published by Coca-Cola on its website www.cokefacts.org, the company insists that its bottling plants have been valuable members of the Colombian community for more than 70 years. The statement asserts that Coca-Cola respects the rights of its employees, including those who choose to join unions.

Cardona said that the protestors are asking Coca-Cola to make up for the damages suffered by the workers and to undertake an investigation.