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4, vol 110 -- February 4, 2002

world news briefs
Giles Grierson

Israeli reservists refuse territories duty

A growing number of officers and combat reservists of the Israel Defense Forces have refused to serve in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. On January 30, the Globe reported that 50 had signed a letter declaring their refusal. By February 1, CBC Radio reported that the number of signatories had grown to over 100. Almost half are officers.

The letter describes the signers as men "raised in the lap of Zionism" who will continue to fight in defence of the Israeli state, but not the territories occupied since the Six Day War of 1967. The letter claims that army orders "had nothing to do with security, and their only intent is to control the Palestinian people forever. We shall fight no more to rule, deport, destroy, blockade, exterminate, starve and humiliate" the Palestinian people.

Those who started the letter hope to gather 500 signatures from reservists. A similar protest in 1978 led to the creation of the organisation Peace Now, which continues to fight for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Murders at Coke bottling plant

In 1996, a group of Colombian paramilitaries shot and killed Isidro Segundo Gil, a member of his union's executive board, at the Carepa Coca-Cola bottling plant where he worked. Two union activists from the same plant were killed in 1994, and there have been killings at other plants. Last month, a coalition of Colombian and American unions protested outside the World of Coca-Cola Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, to publicise the murders and an ongoing court case against the company.

In July, the Colombian union Sinaltrainal, with the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labour Rights Fund, filed a lawsuit in a Florida court against Coca-Cola, Pan-American Beverages - the largest soft-drink bottler in Latin America - and Bebidas y Alimentos, the operator of the Carepa plant owned by Richard Kirby of Florida.

The case was filed after an unsuccessful four-year fight for justice in Colombian courts. The suit charges the three companies with complicity in the assassination of Gil. The unions claim that the plant manager, Ariosto Milan Mosquera, has a personal history with the paramilitaries and ordered them to destroy the union. At the time of the killing, the union was in negotiations with the company. After the killing, negotiating stopped and the paramilitaries camped outside the plant for two months. Coca-Cola never complained. Many workers, out of fear for their lives, quit and left the area.

Three out of every five unionists killed in the world are Colombian, according to a recent report by the United Steelworkers.

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