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New York: Activists holding signs reading "Genocide: It's the real thing" demonstrated outside Coca-Cola Co.'s offices in Manhattan on Friday as part of a nationwide protest targeting Beijing Olympic sponsors for failing to press China to help end the violence in Darfur.
The protest was one of a dozen rallies organised by Dream for Darfur and the Save Darfur Coalition on Friday targeting Coca-Cola, Swatch, Volkswagen and General Electric for failing to act against China, which has significant investments in Sudan. China buys more than two-thirds of Sudan's oil exports.
The companies are among 15 of 19 top Olympic advertisers who received poor or failing grades from Dream for Darfur in its second corporate responsibility report card.
About 40 protesters wearing white T-shirts with a red bar and bearing the words "Genocide Olympics?" shouted slogans and handed out flyers to tourists and shoppers from behind barricades on Fifth Avenue in Midtown.
Several times protesters shouted the phone numbers of Coke executives through a megaphone and read scripted messages on their voicemails. They also collected signatures on a letter addressed to Coke's CEO.
Dream for Darfur's aim is to shame the sponsors into using their public profile and economic heft to lobby Beijing to pressure Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir to allow UN peacekeepers into his country's western Darfur region, where since 2003 the conflict has killed as many as 300,000 people and resulted in more than 2.5 million displaced people or refugees.
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