May 12, 2008
Bhopal activists in India want Dow Chemical to pay for clean-up
International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal activist Satinath Sarangi (left)
NEW DELHI (AFP) — Activists for victims of India's 1984 Bhopal gas leak said Monday that as the owner of the former Union Carbide, Dow Chemicals should pay for a clean-up before any new business in the country.
Dow Chemicals, which bought Union Carbide in 1999, 15 years after toxic gases leaked from a plant in Bhopal in central India on the night of December 3, 1984, is not "immune" to responsibilities of compensation, said activist Rachna Dhingra of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
The group, citing what they said was an Indian law ministry document obtained through the Right for Information Act last week, which they said holds that "irrespective of the manner in which Union Carbide has been acquired by Dow Chemicals, if there is any legal liability it would be borne by Dow Chemicals."
"We are happy to say that the law ministry is saying something we have been saying all along," said Satinath Sarangi of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
The gas leak, described as the world's worst industrial accident, occurred when a storage tank at a Union Carbide India pesticide plant spewed deadly cyanide gas into the air in Bhopal, killing more than 3,500 slum dwellers immediately.
The death toll has since climbed to more than 15,000, the government says.
Survivors and activists want US giant Dow Chemical to pay for the clean-up and health damages.
Dow says all liabilities were settled in 1989 when Union Carbide paid 470 million dollars to the Indian government to be allocated to survivors and families of the dead.
But local court cases in India have since challenged Dow's stand and called for more compensation for victims as well as for the environmental damage.
Dow Chemicals has sought help from the government and local companies such as Tata Group to settle the matter so it can proceed with investments in India estimated at one billion dollars.
The Bhopal activist group however says the plant site still contains around 5,000 tonnes of toxic chemicals, which have contaminated soil and water up to five kilometres (three miles) away.
Posted by tim at 04:29 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2008
Bhopal gas victims gate-crash PM house, held
New Delhi: The night of December 2, 1984 has stretched into 23 years, but the Bhopal gas tragedy lives on in the minds of people and in their bodies.
One of the survivors of the tragedy, Rashida Bi says that they are still forced to drink contaminated water as they do not have access to clean water.
Sometimes to survive is also to perish, like 70 of the survivors did, by breaching a high-security zone to literally knock on the Prime Minister's door, hoping that he would hear them.
However, the only ones who heard the victims gate-crashing the PM's residence were his security, who carried the protestors — including 39 children — away, and these survivors once again became victims and landed in the police station instead of getting the justice that they were hoping would be doled out to them.
Fighting ill health, the victims of the 1984 tragedy had walked to Delhi two years ago. A hunger strike that time had won them a meeting with the Prime Minister and they had been promised that their demand for clean drinking water for the 25,000 survivors would be met.
An activist for the victims of the tragedy, Nityanand says, "We walked to Delhi in 2006. Two years have passed and we are yet to receive even a drop of clean drinking water."
Meanwhile, the Group of Ministers on the Bhopal gas tragedy, headed by Arjun Singh is yet to hear them out for an empowered commisson on Bhopal, and a separate law for the gas-affected people, and most importantly, to deliver justice to them.
It has been a very long walk from Bhopal to Delhi and a long wait in Jantar Mantar for the victims of the gas tragedy, which include physically and mentally challenged children.
However, it seems as if the matter was not important enough for the Prime Minister to even consider meeting them — not even when they tried to gate-crash into his residence in a desperate bid to get what every human being deserves, clean drinking water.
Posted by tim at 05:27 PM | Comments (0)
Bhopal children knock at Manmohan’s door
Police personnel preventing Bhopal gas victims from staging a surprise demonstration with their children outside the Prime Minister’s residence in New Delhi on Monday.
NEW DELHI: More than 40 gas-affected children from Bhopal virtually knocked at the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s door at Race Course Road to draw his attention to their demands.
The children, along with their parents, made a sudden appearance near the Prime Minister’s residence demanding livelihood and clean environment.
“We are of the same age as the Prime Minister’s grandchildren. Would he let his grandchildren drink poisoned water or see them sitting on the streets for days,” Yasim Khan, who walked from Bhopal to Delhi, said.
On April 16, Yasim wrote a letter to Dr. Singh with blood drawn from the Bhopal gas victims, seeking constitution of an empowered commission to look into economic and medical rehabilitation, environmental clean-up and other issues related to the gas victims.
Posted by tim at 03:45 PM | Comments (0)
'The media has ignored the Bhopal tragedy'
Dominique Lapierre, author of Five Minutes Past Midnight, a book on the tragedy that visited Bhopal in the midnight of December 2, 1984, talks to Sreelatha Menon on the continuing suffering and neglect of the survivors of the Union Carbide gas leak. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan on Monday.
You have written a book on Bhopal and you have continued to visit the survivors since 1984. What is the difference between then and now?
A lot of problems are pending. On May 5, the activists and survivors who went to appeal to the prime minister have got arrested. I think there are a number of questions like cleaning up of the site of the disaster which is absolutely essential.
For lack of cleaning it, the underground water is completely poisoned and people are drinking poisoned water. I think they should be given the right to safe drinking water.
What went wrong? Why has the lot of Bhopal victims remained unaddressed for so many years?
I don't know. It is something to be worried about. Social, health and economic rehabilitation is needed. I have given money from the royalties of my book to build the gynaecological clinic at the Sambhavna Trust.
The trust treats 160 people... free of cost daily.
Yes. These are people who are never diagnosed, people who had only one aspirin tablet for curing their horrible condition caused by inhaling the toxic gas.
This is a very lethal gas. It has gone into the genes of the people. We don't know how many generations would be affected by it. Today, malformed children are still being born, women are getting cancer of the cervix. This is worrisome.
What has been the role of the Indian media?
I am very sad that the Indian media is ignoring this tragedy. When I started doing my research for my book on Bhopal, the media was asking me, 'Why on Bhopal?'. And I was shocked. Had there been a media outcry day after day, no government would let people suffer like this.
Do you think that the issues concerning Bhopal have been neglected because the victims are the poorest of the poor?
Yes. If the rich were involved then the response of the government and the media would definitely be different. On Sunday I was sitting on the sidewalks with the survivors who are camping here in Delhi's Jantar Mantar demanding to be heard by the government. I found that not a line was being written about them in newspapers here.
As you said once that the wind blew that night in the direction where the poorest people were living.
Very true.
You have equated Warren Anderson of Union Carbide with Osama bin Laden, killing more than the latter did, and remaining a fugitive. What do you think about Dow? Should they take responsibility?
They should assume responsibility of Union Carbide. I am sure of that. They should at least clean the toxic affluent.
They say that Carbide has its own mechanism of dealing with liabilities.
I don't know that. I know that Dow must take responsibility at least for the clean up of the toxic wastes.
Have you spoken to Dow?
No, never. But in the future I may talk to them.
Today you will receive the Padma Bhushan from the government of India which you have criticised for not acting enough on Bhopal.
I am just sad not critical. I have no right to be critical as I am an outsider. If I have a chance I will talk about these people. It is sad the voice of these people is not reaching the government.
Posted by tim at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2008
Indian police hold 80 Bhopal protesters
Ashok Sharma, Associated Press Writer, Boston Globe, May 5, 2008
Nida, 10 months old, an allegedly Bhopal gas leak disaster victim's deformed daughter, looks out from the window of a bus after being arrested along with her parents from outside Indian prime minister's house, in New Delhi, India, Monday, May 5, 2008. More than 40 children of Bhopal gas tragedy victim along with with their parents demonstrated outside prime minister house demanding economic and medical rehabilitation, environmental clean-up and provision of clean drinking water. Bhopal Gas leak disaster killed at least 10,000 people and affected some 550,000 others in the central Indian city of Bhopal in December 1984. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
NEW DELHI—Police detained 80 people who walked nearly 500 miles from the site of a catastrophic 1984 gas leak in central India to protest Monday outside the prime minister's residence, an organizer said.
more stories like thisThe protesters, including 52 children, were calling for the site of the Bhopal gas leak to be cleaned up and for survivors to be compensated, said Rachna Dhingra, a spokeswoman for Bhopal Group for Information and Action.
Guards took the protesters to a nearby police station soon after they arrived outside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's official residence, Dhingra said. They were freed two hours later.
Police officer Jagat Singh said the protesters came without an appointment with the prime minister, and protests are not allowed around the official residence.
The leak from the Bhopal pesticide plant in 1984 killed at least 10,000 people and affected about 550,000 others. A subsidiary of U.S. chemical company Union Carbide ran the plant at the time.
For decades, survivors have been fighting to have the site cleaned up, but they say their efforts were slowed when Michigan-based Dow Chemical Co. took over Union Carbide in 2001, seven years after Union Carbide sold its interest in the Bhopal plant.
The protesters want an official panel to work on social, economic and medical rehabilitation for the gas victims, and to arrange for the clean up of the site and drinking water in the area, said Nityanand Jayaraman, an organizer.
Jayaraman said nearly 10,000 tons of toxic waste was still lying in and around the site.
In 1989, Union Carbide paid $470 million in compensation to victims of the gas leak and said responsibility for the cleanup lay with the government of India.
Dow has also maintained that it is not responsible for cleaning up the site.
The plant is now under the control of India's Madhya Pradesh state, which has agreed to pay an Indian company, Bharuch Environ Infrastructure Ltd., $220,000 to dispose of the waste.
© Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
more stories like this
Posted by tim at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)
Police detain Bhopal protesters
Bhopal protesters say babies born since the disaster suffer illnesses
Police in India's capital have detained dozens of protesters demanding more help for victims of the world's worst industrial disaster, at Bhopal in 1984.
They were briefly taken into custody after an unauthorised protest outside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office.
They are demanding more compensation and a better clean-up of the site.
Several thousand people died in Bhopal on the night of the gas leak from a Union Carbide factory. Thousands more died in the weeks that followed.
Compensation
The protesters wanted to meet the prime minister to press their case for more to be done to clean up the site around the former factory, which still contains thousands of tonnes of toxic chemicals.
Dozens of demonstrators, including a number of children, were taken to a nearby police station but were freed two hours later.
Police said the protesters had no appointment with the prime minister and demonstrations around the official residence were not permitted.
Many of the demonstrators have been in Delhi for more than a month, after walking 800km (500 miles) from the site of the 3 December 1984 disaster.
The BBC's Chris Morris in Delhi says one key issue is the plight of children born in Bhopal since the disaster who suffer from a variety of mental and physical disorders.
Union Carbide was bought by the Dow Chemical Company in 2001. Dow says it is not responsible for cleaning up the site, which sits on land owned by the Madhya Pradesh state government.
Union Carbide paid $470m in compensation to victims in 1989.
Posted by tim at 05:16 PM | Comments (0)
Fight for justice for Bhopal gas victims going in vain
Posted by tim at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)
40 Bhopal children protesting outside PMO detained
New Delhi, May 5 (IANS) At least 70 survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas leak tragedy, including 40 children, were detained Monday as they staged a protest outside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s residence seeking government-redressal of their grievances. Braving the risks of holding a demonstration in a high-security zone, the children took to task the government for making the Bhopal gas tragedy victims walk and wait merely to get their basic rights to health, livelihood and clean environment.
“We are of the same age as Dr. (Manmohan) Singh’s grandchildren. Would he let his grandchildren drink poisoned water or see them sitting on the hot pavement for 40 days?” Asked 11-year-old Yasmin Khan, one of the two score youngsters who have come to the capital after an arduous 800-km march from Bhopal.
Representatives of the Bhopal survivors have been holding a sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar here for the past 40 days to draw the government’s attention to inadequate health care facilities, poisoned water sources and other problems they continue to face.
On the night of Dec 3, 1984, a Union Carbide subsidiary pesticides plant in Bhopal accidentally released 40 tonnes of poisonous methyl isocyanate gas, killing approximately 3,800 people.
The incident, known as one of the world’s worst industrial disasters, left hundreds of thousands suffering from various diseases after chronic exposure. Contaminated groundwater around the plant area still continues to infect people with various ailments ranging from skin problems to birth defects.
Nityanand Jayaraman, an activist who is protesting along with the survivors, said: “On April 16, Yasmin wrote a letter to the prime minister with blood drawn from Bhopal victims, seeking an hour of his time.
“This letter was delivered to the prime minister along with hand-written notes from more than 500 children from across the country,” he said.
Since then, 2,800 people from 18 countries have sent fax messages to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for a meeting with Manmohan Singh on the survivors’ grievances.
Various NGOs working for the survivors have demanded an empowered commission to execute social, economic and medical rehabilitation, environmental cleanup and provision of clean drinking water.
They have submitted a draft bill for the commission to the PMO and a Group of Ministers.
Posted by tim at 12:49 PM | Comments (0)