It’s a remarkable letter — dated April 1, 2013.

From Nicholas Panos, an attorney with the Office of Mergers and Acquisitions at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

To Ray Rogers, a veteran corporate campaigner and director of Corporate Campaign and the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke.

In the letter, Panos calls on Rogers to delete portions of the Killer Coke web site that are critical of Coca Cola.

Rogers, who runs his campaigns on a shoestring out of his offices in Brooklyn, New York, started the Campaign to Stop Killer Coke in 2003 to hold Coke’s “bottlers and subsidiaries accountable and to end the gruesome cycle of violence and collaboration with paramilitary thugs, particularly in Colombia.”

“These atrocities include the systematic intimidation, kidnapping, torture and murder of union leaders and members of their families in efforts to crush their unions,” Rogers says. “In countries like Colombia and Guatemala, a strong union can mean the difference between life and death for people who dare to challenge corporate and political abuses.”

Rogers thinks that someone called on Panos to write a letter to Rogers to try and shut him up.

“I asked Panos who called him, and he wouldn’t say who called him,” Rogers says.

Panos, in his letter to Rogers, writes that “we note the assertion that readers of your newsletter might have concerns about the way Coca-Cola abuses people and the environment.”

“Similar inflammatory statements may be found at other locations on your website, such as under the heading ‘upcoming events,’” Panos wrote. “Note (b) to Rule 14a-9 prohibits the making of statements that allege improper or illegal conduct absent a factual foundation. Please delete these statements from the website and future solicitations, or provide us with the factual foundation in support.”

We wanted to ask Panos about the letter to Rogers, but SEC spokesperson Christina D’Amico said — “The letter speaks for itself.”

On Killer Coke’s “upcoming events” page, Rogers solicits the public for proxies to attend Coca Cola’s April 24 annual meeting in Atlanta.

“The Campaign to Stop Killer Coke plans to confront the company over their abysmal human rights and environmental record once again and we need your help,” Rogers writes on the page.

Panos says that if you are soliciting proxies to attend an annual meeting, you have to abide by SEC’s rules.

Which means no statements that allege “improper or illegal conduct absent a factual foundation.”

Rogers obliged with six pages of what he considers factual foundation.

Rogers writes in a letter to Panos dated April 15, 2013 that he doesn’t believe his organization has violated SEC rules “by gathering a small number of admissions to the Coca-Cola Company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in order to challenge the company’s widespread labor, human rights and environmental abuses and aggressive marketing to children of unhealthy beverages that fuel the childhood obesity, high blood pressure and diabetes epidemics.”

Rogers goes on to say that “all these abuses have been well-documented in books, reports, films, articles, lawsuits and first-person accounts.”

Rogers points to a number of websites documenting these abuses,  including KillerCoke.org, StopCokeDiscrimination.org, the Polaris Institute and India Resource.  

Rogers said that in a phone conversation he had with Panos on April 1, Panos asked Rogers to change the wording of a newsletter that was posted on the Killer Coke web site.

Rogers said he wouldn’t change the wording of the letter.

“One has to wonder whether the SEC is overworked or the revolving door syndrome between influential SEC employees and corporations is causing a lack of investigations into, and legal proceedings against the likes of Coca-Cola by the SEC,” Rogers wrote.

“I point to a report by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) issued in February 2013 entitled — Dangerous Liaisons: Revolving Door at SEC Creates Risks of Regulatory Capture.“

“The report is highly critical of the revolving door phenomenon that it says “blurs the lines between one of the nation’s most important regulatory agencies and the interests it regulates.”

“Perhaps with respect to Coca-Cola’s annual meetings, the SEC should be concerned, not only with the company’s lying and deceiving, but also with how the company’s CEO Muhtar Kent tries to suppress shareholders and/or their proxies from raising important, but incriminating, issues related to labor, human rights, environmental matters and criminal activity,” Rogers said.

Rogers says that nobody from the SEC ever called him about a complaint he filed with the SEC against Coca Cola in June 2011.

“The SEC plays patsy with the Wall Street banks and corporations and then they try to shut me up,” Rogers says. “What’s that about?”