An official statement released by Coca-Cola defended the company’s practices, arguing that Coca-Cola itself does provide many of the services AIDS activists are calling for and that the company is not directly responsible for the policies of its subsidiaries.

“The Coca-Cola Company provides healthcare coverage to our employees in Africa, which includes free, confidential AIDS testing; access to antiretroviral drugs; and a local AIDS committee that offers basic training in HIV/AIDS awareness,” said the statement. “Our bottling partners, who are independent companies, are at various stages of developing their AIDS strategies. They are responsible for providing healthcare for their employees and some of their healthcare offerings may differ from ours.”

Some HAC members compared Coke’s African health care policy to recent revelations of big business corruption.

“While the world talks about corporate scandals taking place in the accounting books, it needs to take a look at the scandals taking place on the scales of life and death,” said Yi-An Huang ’05, a member of HAC.

Saturday’s rally included speeches by John Bell, an activist from ACT UP’s Philadelphia branch; Brook Baker, a law professor at Northeastern University; Sharonann Lynch, of the Health Global Access Project; and Steven L. Porter, a Princeton University student studying at the Harvard Summer School this summer.

Porter worked in South Africa on the Treatment Action Campaign, a movement to get treatment for mothers and pregnant women with HIV.

Coke came under fire from student activists earlier this year when Harvard Students Against Sweatshops put up posters on campus denouncing the corporation’s alleged involvement in the murder of Colombian trade unionists, for which the company is currently being sued.

—Staff writer Stephanie M. Skier can be reached at skier@fas.harvard.edu.