Category: Uncategorized
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Ram Vilas Paswan declares support for Empowered Commission on Bhopal
Bhopal survivors’ organisations today presented the case of Sana, an 8-year old girl from the contaminated water affected Annu Nagar, to Rajya Sabha Member, Mr. Ram Vilas Paswan to highlight how the Group of Ministers’ recommendations last month do not address the unfolding health and economic disasters among victims of Carbide’s toxic legacy in Bhopal.…
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Dharna day 6: “Oh look, the bastards are back to rob us”
Delhi’s incessant heat that persists even during the night resulted in an asthma attack for Irfan Bhai. Morning unfurled with hasty emergency calls asking for volunteers to take Irfan Bhai to AIIMS, one of India’s leading hospitals. However, failing to find a volunteer at such a short notice Vikas and Nawab Bhai started off for…
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Appeal for Solidarity with Bhopal Survivors on Dharna for Justice in Bhopal
DOWNLOAD HINDI VERSION Dear Friend: Over the last month, you may have noticed numerous reports in the media about Bhopal — the betrayal of Bhopal victims, about how the plight of survivors of the gas tragedy 26 years ago has gone from bad to worse due to neglect and insensitivity of successive governments. Some of…
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Details of criminal charges laid by police against Bhopali protesters
Police brutality against Bhopali protesters, beatings with fists, boots and lathis, pulling and dragging by the hair, ripping women’s clothes and abusing them in the filthiest terms, even hitting young children and elderly people– all these are things Bhopal and Delhi police have done to peaceful protesters who dared to ask the government to keep…
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Possible questions for Parliament
Legal case 1.What steps have been taken to produce representatives of UCC and UCE in Bhopal CJM’s court? 2.What steps have been taken to vacate the MP High Court’s stay (17th March 2005) on summoning The Dow Chemical Company (TDCC) to produce Union Carbide Corporation, US in Bhopal CJM’s court? 3.What steps have been taken…
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Dharna day 5: Ram Vilas Paswan visits and meets Sana
Most of us spent the last night waiting for the wind to blow from somewhere. When that didn’t happen most of us spent the night counting stars and braving mosquitoes. Due to some miscommunication the caretaker at the St’ Columbus school had switched off electricity and so we had to sleep outside in open. Nonetheless,…
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Dharna day 4: Common folk make way for the Commonwealth
Day 4: 29-07-2010 Today was relatively a light day though Delhi heat and humidity were present in equal measure. We started the day as usual with a fresh round of slogans. Some 100 Bhopalis joined us today. Amongst these were Mamu and Naeem who had also participated very actively in the last padyatra (footmarch) in…
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Dharna day 3: Visits to schools and the Delhi High Court
The day began early in the morning, both today and yesterday, for the young women of Children Against Dow Carbide. Safreen, Yasmeen and Komal kickstarted their Delhi school outreach with their message about Bhopal, about their lives made unusual by virtue of growing up next to a toxic factory site which had seen the world’s…
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Dharna day 2: Rain and the art of the languriya
The rains came and went with irritating irregularity. We had moved from our first day’s stakeout to the other side of the road. Not only was the original site more slush prone, located as it was right next to a public toilet, but also because the site across the street had an additional tree. We…
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Dharna day 1: Camped in a hostile city, Bhopalis sing
BY A NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS Coming to Delhi to knock at the doors to the conscience of the Central Government — the Prime Minister, in particular — is something that Bhopalis have done four times in the last five years. Each time supporters from India and abroad have responded with remarkable warmth. Each time, people…
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Bhopalis launch indefinite dharna in Delhi
More than 150 Bhopal survivors and people from water-affected areas began an indefinite dharna in Jantar Mantar that will last through the parliamentary session. The agitation intends to pressure the Central Government to revisit its recent decisions on issues of compensation, health care and rehabilitation, legal action against Union Carbide and Dow Chemical, and hazardous…
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Bhopal survivors will begin indefinite dharna in Delhi
The June 7 verdict by the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bhopal triggered a renewed interest in the plight of the Bhopal survivors. Buckling under the public outrage generated by the media coverage of the disaster, the Prime Minister set up a Group of Ministers. The recommendations of the GoM fall way short of addressing the…
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Mr Justice Ahmadi does the decent thing
Mr Justice Ahmadi, the Supreme Court justice who controversially reduced criminal charges against the Indian accused in the Union Carbide Gas Tragedy trial, has resigned. Cynics may say that in doing so he hopes to escape further scrutiny of his actions in favour of Union Carbide Corporation, at the time an absconder from the same…
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Environmental
In 1989 Union Carbide was desperate to get out of India. The lease for the factory site required that it be handed back in an acceptable environmental state. The corporation carried out some tests on soil and water which, horrifyingly for them, showed that both were heavily and lethally contaminated with chemicals known to cause…
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Political
By June 2005 Babulal Gaur, then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh, had for a year been ignoring a Supreme Court ruling to provide safe drinking water for communities whose wells were being poisoned by chemicals leaking from the derelict Carbide plant. The reason: lack of funds. But this did not stop him announcing plans to…