BHOPAL • LONDON • NEW YORK • 14 NOVEMBER
2002
IMPORTANT STATEMENT BY SURVIVORS' ORGANISATIONS
Secret
Union Carbide documents obtained by "discovery"
during
a class action suit brought by survivors against
the company in New York, reveal for the first time
that the technology used at the fatal Bhopal factory
– including the crucial units manufacturing
carbon monoxide and methyl isocyanate (MIC) –
was unproven, and that the company knew it would
pose unknown risks.
For
18 years since the disaster, Carbide has consistently
lied by claiming that the technology in its fatal
Bhopal factory was identical to that used in its
plant at Institute, West Virginia. The corporation's
lawyers and PR gurus even referred to Institute
as Bhopal's "sister plant". But Bhopal
was the ugly sister, always underfunded, always
second-best.
The
corporation knew the danger, but regarded it as
an acceptable "business risk".
| Exceprt
UCC04206 from Union Carbide Proposal accompanying
Internal Memorandum of 2 December 1973 |
|
|
|
Click
graphic to see the whole page
|
The
proposal's 50 pages demonstrate a blithe disregard
for human safety. Nowhere is there any mention of
risks to surrounding communities – the city's
railway station was less than a mile away and downwind
of the plant. Instead they reveal that the company
was obsessed to keep control of its Indian subsidiary
at all costs – an obsession which led directly
to underfunding of the MIC-Sevin unit, and which
explodes another of Carbide's long-standing lies:
that it had no control over its Bhopal plant.
Speaking
at a press conference in Bhopal today, Satinath
Sarangi of the Bhopal Group for Information and
Action, one of the plaintiffs in the New York case,
observed that "Union Carbide built the MIC
unit in order to retain control, they used untried
technology to keep control, they under-funded it
to keep control. When it turned Bhopal into a gas
chamber, they said they'd had no control."
Pressure
mounts for Anderson's extradition
Carbide's
ex-CEO Warren Anderson, who for the past eleven
years has been refusing to appear before a criminal
court in Bhopal, was one of the select Management
Committee who approved the Bhopal MIC project. Pressure
for his extradition to India can now be expected
massively to intensify.
| Exceprt
UCC04186 from Union Carbide internal memorandum
dated 2 December 1973 |
|
|
|
Click
graphic to see the whole page
|
"We
now know for sure that senior Carbide officials,
including Warren Anderson, not only knew about design
defects and potential safety issues with the Bhopal
factory, they actually authorised them," Sarangi
said.
"This
is the documentary proof, the 'high standard of
evidence' that the Indian Attorney General Soli
Sorabjee claimed he didn't have to be able to press
for Warren Anderson and Union Carbide's extradition.
What we've found shows both prior knowledge and
intent on the part of the accused: it is so significant
that it demands the revision of the pending criminal
charges in the Bhopal court."
In
this opening report, timed to coincide with a press
conference being held today in India by the survivors'
groups involved in the New York litigation, Bhopal.Net
brings you the original documents.
We
will be following with detailed analyses of the
documents in the light of the mountain of evidence
that exists about the plant's defective siting,
construction, production processes, storage, waste
disposal, maintenance, training and safety systems.
For
what sum did Carbide find it worth risking the life
of a whole city?
One
old mystery can be cleared up right away.
Union Carbide stored liquid MIC in Bhopal in huge
tanks, far in excess of what ever would have been
permitted in the US. MIC is a dangerously volatile
chemical and these tanks were supposed to be kept
cooled to 0ęC. It is known that for some months
prior to the huge and fatal gas leak of December
1984, the refrigeration system had been switched
off to save the cost of freon gas.
For
the last 18 years, survivors have wondered just
how much the company must have been saving, to make
it worth risking the lives of an entire Indian city.
Now
we know. The figure was $37.68 per day.
| Exceprt
UCC04231 from Union Carbide Project Proposal
of 2 December 1973 |
|
|
|
Click
graphic to see the whole page
|
The
documents
On
2 December 1973 three documents were presented to
the Management Committe of Union Carbide Eastern
Inc, a subsidiary of Union Carbide Corporation:
a two-page internal memorandum relating to the company's
plan to begin manufacturing methyl-isocyanate at
its Bhopal factory; supported by a four-page capital
budget plan and a forty-four page project proposal.
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Memorandum
|
|
Capital
Budget Plan
|
|
Project
Proposal
|
|
Blueprints
for disaster
There
was a dark prophecy hidden in the date of these
documents.
Exactly
eleven years later – on the night of December
2nd 1984 – Carbide's unproven technology, functioning
badly in a by then run-down and loss-making factory
– combined with non-existent staff training,
a savage programme of cost-cutting and almost total
absence of maintenance – released 27 tonnes
of deadly methyl-isocyanate into the night air of
Bhopal.
PLEASE
KEEP VISITING THIS PAGE FOR MORE DETAILS AND ANALYSIS.
MUCH MORE TO COME.
