Coca-Cola Protesters Attacked By Police; Four Hospitalized (India)

[struggle4progress]

Contacts:
R. Ajayan, Plachimada Solidarity Committee (India) T: [phone]
Amit Srivastava, India Resource Center (India) E: [e-mail] T: [phone]

August 16, 2005 (Plachimada): <snip>

The protesters were stopped about 100 meters from the factory gates, and the heavy police force resorted to a violent lathi charge (baton charge), severely injuring four activists who had to be hospitalized with severe head injuries. Another 43 activists were held in custody, including a 16 year old girl who has been transferred to juvenile home. <snip>

The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada, one of the company's largest in India, has been shut down since March 2004 because of local community pressure. The community is experiencing severe water shortages as well as a polluted groundwater resource and soil- directly as a result of Coca-Cola's operations.

The state government of Kerala has announced that it will challenge Coca-Cola's right to extract groundwater in the area, and the panchayat (village council), which initially refused to renew Coca-Cola's license, has now offered a 3 month temporary license with 13 conditions.

In a related development, the Kuttiady panchayat (village council) in Kerala declared its area to be a Coke-free zone, and received the support of shopkeepers as well as political parties, in a show of solidarity with the people of Plachimada. <snip>

http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2005/1097.html

[girl gone mad]

1. Is this the coke plant that..

is stealing their water?

[struggle4progress]

2. Coca-Cola Refused Licence (27 April 2005)

<snip> Every day the company drew nearly 1.5 million litres of groundwater and about 85 truckloads of products left the factory premises. The company also resorted to bringing water from borewells in neighbouring villages because the borewells it had sunk on its premises had failed to provide the required yield. The company siphons off enough water to meet the minimum requirements of about 20,000 people. They have not only lost their water but, with the dried-out farms closing, also their jobs. Those worst affected are up to 10,000 landless labourers.

Then there is pollution. Chemical effluents produced by bottle-washing contaminate the groundwater. Early attempts to dry the foul-smelling sludge and market it as fertiliser failed when farmers started to develop sores on their skin and noticed that their coconut palms were dying. The plant tried to give it away but no one wanted it.

Lab analysis by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board has shown dangerous levels of cadmium in the sludge. Another report done at Exeter University in England at the request of the BBC Radio 4 (whose reporter John Waite visited Plachimada and broadcast his report in July of 2003) found in water in a well near the plant not only impermissible amounts of cadmium but lead at levels that "could have devastating consequences", particularly for pregnant women. The Exeter lab also found the sludge useless as fertiliser. <snip>

http://www.countercurrents.org/gl-thampan270405.htm

[ret5hd]

3. coke=murder...coke=cia

just say no to coke!

[electricray]

4. The Nation had a really good article on this

When Coke first moved in they pawned off the waste sludge as a fertilizer for farmlands. The government in this province is pretty corrupt and even they got fed up with it after a while.