In the midst of our self-proclaimed war on terror, it appears that U.S. companies in Colombia (South America, silly, not the land of Anthony Peeler and Jason Sutherland) are literally getting away with murder. At the forefront of these largely unreported crimes against humanity is the supplier of the University of Kansas official soft drink.

University officials failed to make students aware of Coca-Colas ties to terrorism when they entered into a 10-year agreement with the soda-pop giant in 1997. The same corporation that has successfully cornered the bottled-water market (Dasani, Dannon and Evian) is now starting another kind of monopoly in Colombia. Instead of yellow $100 bills and the rights to Park Place, the game Coke is playing in South America involves knocking off pesky union leaders in order to maintain a hold in a dangerously poor country run by military warlords.

The largest and most brutal paramilitary organization in Colombia, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was designated a terrorist organization by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. This means that any person providing financial or material support to the AUC is in violation of U.S. law. This has not stopped Coca-Cola bottler Pan American Beverages (Panamco) from providing support to the AUC, which then murders and tortures trade union leaders seeking to represent workers at company facilities in Colombia.

The International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and the United Steel Workers of America Union (USWA) have brought lawsuits under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) against Coca-Cola, seeking to stop their complicity with the terrorist AUC. The court has acknowledged links between the Colombian State and paramilitary groups, as it is common knowledge that paramilitaries exist at the pleasure of the U.S. government.

One of the primary targets of Coca-Colas merciless attacks is SINAL TRAINAL, Colombias food and beverage industry union. In the latest of a string of criminal actions against SINAL TRAINAL, organizers report members have been confined in plants and hotels and held until they surrender their work contract in an attempt by Coca-Cola to close plants and substitute them with distribution centers. On Sept. 10, the 15-year-old son of a unionist was taken hostage as he was riding his bicycle and tortured.

SINAL TRAINAL has sued Coca-Cola in U.S. courts for its longstanding policies of physical threats, intimidation, displacement, imprisonment, mass layoffs and even assassination of union leaders. According to the lawsuit, filed in Floridas Federal District Court, employees at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Colombia that do choose to show allegiance to their union realize that doing so is like carrying a tombstone on your back. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez, with the approval of the Bush Administration, is putting in place an ultra-repressive system for the benefit of transnational corporations such as Coca-Cola. Meanwhile, poverty in Colombia is reaching catastrophic proportions, affecting more than 60% of the population.

Our view of these shifty, transnational (coughÉAmericanÉcough) corporations is completely sheltered from their actions seen around the world. The off-shore dealings of corporations such as Coca-Cola do not exactly endear us to countries constantly being reminded of our supposed efforts to stop terrorism. The CEOs of Coke and other transnational corporations do not oversee company operations in the middle of nowhere. Company policy is drawn up and set into motion right here at home, where the fight is supposed to be against terrorism.

Being an active, full-time student at the University means that your bank account will eventually cross paths with one of the many beverages Coke has waiting for you around campus. The time has come for University officials to re-evaluate their contract with a company that banks on a product that human rights activists such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark refer to as Killer Coke. Without immediate action, students will continue to be complicit participants in a human rights tragedy for the remainder of the Universitys deal with a soft drink devil.