[Peace-discuss] Remembering the 1984 Bhopal (India) gas disaster

[Ra Ravishankar]

Mad Dow disease - Living Poisoned daily
------------------------------

What's common to Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Union Carbide? They 
all gassed humans. The first two have acquired well deserved notoriety, 
but in yet another instance of corporate malfeasance going unpunished, 
Union Carbide (acquired by Dow Chemicals in 2001) has so far escaped 
unscathed.

In the early hours of December 3, 1984, several tons of lethal methyl 
isocyanate (MIC) leaked out of Union Carbide's pesticide factory in 
Bhopal, India. More than 8,000 people died in the first three days. The 
death toll has since then crossed 20,000 and an estimated 120,000 remain 
chronically ill.

Warren Anderson, Union Carbide's CEO at the time of the disaster, was 
charged with culpable homicide (punishable with imprisonment for upto 
twenty years) and declared a "fugitive from justice" in 1992. Both Union 
Carbide and Anderson face criminal charges in India but continue to 
ignore the Indian courts and also the Manhattan District Court Judge's 
ruling that Union Carbide "shall consent to submit to the jurisdiction 
of the courts of India."

Given the poor safety standards at the Union Carbide factory, it was a 
powder keg waiting to explode. In 1982, a confidential safety audit 
warned of a "potential for the release of toxic materials" and 
identified 61 hazards, 30 of them major and 11 in the dangerous MIC 
section ofthe factory. Corrective measures were taken at Union Carbide's 
sister-plant in West Virginia, but not in Bhopal. Furthermore, while all 
the vital systems in the West Virginia plant had back-ups hooked to 
computerized alarms, even the sole manual alarm in the Bhopal plant had 
been switched off. Consequently, the sleeping victims were caught 
completely unaware.

On the night of the disaster, six safety measures designed to prevent a 
gas leak were either shut down or malfunctioning. A crucial 
refrigeration unit had been turned off so as to save $40 a day. This is 
not all, though. Recently declassified Union Carbide documents revealed 
that it used unproven technology to keep costs down.

In February 1989, the Indian Government settled (without consulting the 
survivors or their representatives) for a paltry $470 million 
compensation with Union Carbide. About 95 per cent of the survivors 
received $500 for lifelong injury and loss of livelihood and Union 
Carbide was absolved of its civil -- but NOT criminal and environmental 
-- liabilities.

This much was clear when in 2001, Dow Chemicals bought over Union 
Carbide. Dow accepted Carbide's asbestos liabilities in the U.S., but 
has been trying to lie its way through Carbide's Bhopal liabilities in 
India. To add insult to injury, it claimed "$500 is plenty good for an 
Indian" and refused to clean up the Bhopal site. Meanwhile, the chemical 
wastes left behind by Union Carbide continue to take lives and 
livelihoods, not to mention deformities in newborn babies.

Soon after the accident, Barry Neuman prophecied in the Wall Street 
Journal that Indians don't expect compensation for lives lost because 
"the certainty of reincarnation satisfies the Hindus; for the Muslims, 
what God wills, God wills" (quoted on ABC NEWS, September 4, 2002). It 
turned out that not just Indians, but social justice activists 
everywhere -- be they accident survivors like Rashida Bee and Champa 
Devi Shukla who lost immediate members of their families to the disaster 
and themselves suffer from several ailments or Texan fisherwoman Diane 
Wilson -- do care for justice and will settle for nothing less.

The Bhopal disaster, rightly dubbed the "Hiroshima of the Chemical 
industry",
epitomizes the worst of corporate globalization. The 19 year-old 
struggle for justice is one of the longest ever against a transnational 
corporation and reinforces the need for enforcing corporate 
accountability. As the survivors' legal counsel Raj Sharma says, 
"Criminal trial of corporate CEOs is not merely a necessary legal 
measure for justice in Bhopal" but "an essential prerequisite for 
tackling the growing crisis of corporate crime." Despite the many 
hurdles (including the U.S. and Indian Governments and the powerful 
business interests that control them), an International Campaign for 
Justice in Bhopal continues to gain in strength.

The Bhopal campaign has received the support of AFL-CIO, Corporate 
Watch, Farm Workers of America, Greenpeace, Jobs With Justice, the 
Living Wage Campaign, National Association of Working Women and United 
Steel workers of America, among others. This July, 18 members of the 
U.S. Congress (including Dennis Kucinich) accused Dow of being a "party 
to the ongoing human rights and environmental abuses in Bhopal." They 
also took Dow and Carbide to task for the companies' "blatant disregard 
for the law."

In the run up to the 19th anniversary of the disaster, a recent faculty 
petition for justice in Bhopal (http://www.petitiononline.com/dirtydow) 
has gotten more than 260 endorsements. And December 3rd is being 
observed as Global Day of Against Corporate Crime 
(http://www.bhopal.net/gda) in more than 20 campuses across the United 
States.

Bhopal is not the only skeleton in Dow's closet. If you want to help 
those ravaged by Dow Chemicals, please email dirty_dow at yahoo.com

For more on this, please check http://www.bhopal.net and 
http://www.studentsforbhopal.org
<http://www.studentsforbhopal.org>