Olympic Sponsor Coca-Cola to Invest $10 Million towards Building Cemeteries in Darfur

As corporate sponsors of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing face the increasing probability that the growing firestorm surrounding China’s human rights and environmental transgressions will harm more than help the profile of their brands, Olympic partner Coca-Cola announced yesterday that they will invest $10 million towards the construction of cemeteries in the Darfur region of Sudan.

“The atmosphere of these games creates a vexing dilemma for sponsors. Corporations don’t want to surrender the $50 million or more they’ve put into sponsoring the games, but at the same time, it’s becoming imperative that they take measures to create the illusion they care about human rights and things of this nature," noted public relations analyst George Plume.

A press release issued by Coca-Cola stated that their investment underscores their long-lasting commitment to human rights.

“There is nothing the Coca-Cola Company values more than human rights, and there is no human right greater than the right of dignity in death,” the statement read.

According to project planners, the endowment will subsidize the construction of three large cemeteries in and around Darfur capable of housing thousands of corpses of men, women and children slaughtered by militias armed by the victims' own government with money generated selling oil to China, Sudan’s largest trading partner.

“The dead of Darfur deserve better than being bulldozed into mass graves,” remarked Coca-Cola spokesman Steven Tierney, “And with this venture, many of them will be assured of being interned in their own individual plot marked with a personalized gravestone.”

Not the only Olympic sponsor to step up to the plate, McDonalds has reportedly launched a campaign that will offer free french fries with the order of any hamburger to victims of Chinese human rights violations who can provide physical evidence of their abuse.

Share prices of Coca-Cola, a corporation which within the last decade has sanctioned the murder, kidnapping and harassment of union members of Columbian bottling plants, and precipitated the destruction of agriculture in several regions around India by privatizing the local water supplies, remained stable on Wall Street today.