The post below was originally published by the editors of Bhopal.net over 12 years ago, on September 8, 2002. Even though Anderson died in September 2014, the fight for justice lives on. This post’s original conclusion, “[Anderson] and his wife must have been hoping Bhopal had gone away. But Bhopal will never go away. Not until there is justice.” still rings true – Bhopal will never leave Warren Anderson. He will go down in history as a man who knowingly put profit and greed over the lives of tens of thousands of people. He will go down in history as a murderer.
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BRIDGEHAMPTON, LONG ISLAND: Ex-Carbide CEO Warren Anderson is clearly startled by all the media attention focussed on him since a court in Bhopal reaffirmed on 28 August that he is wanted for the homicide of 20,000 Bhopalis, and called for his immediate extradition. He must really have thought he’d got away with it. Warren has been ignoring the court’s summonses and Interpol’s arrest warrant for more than a decade. How is it, Channel 4 asked last week, that US authorities have apparently been unable to trace him, when it turns out he has been living openly at his house in Long Island’s exclusive Hamptons district? (Channel 4 found the address, incidentally, on our website.)
Toxic chemicals abandoned at its factory by Union Carbide have poisoned the drinking water of 20,000 people. In May 2004 the Indian Supreme Court ordered local politicians to provide the communities with clean, safe drinking water. The politicians ignored the order.
On Tuesday 17 May, 300 people, overwhelmingly women, many with children and babies in arms, went to government offices to protest. They banged spoons on tin plates in a “Wake Up” (in Hindi “Neend Udao”) protest. The politicians’ response was to send in the riot police.
Pictures of police kicking and punching women and children have shocked the world. Amnesty International has expressed concern and asked the Bhopal authorities to bring those accused of violence to book.
The survivors of Bhopal have suffered enough. We need the help of every decent person whose sense of justice is as outraged as that of the women who dared to raise their voices against the politicial bullies.
In another manifestation of what has become the largest students campaign against Dow since the Vietnam War, students at the University of California called for the university to divest from Dow and refuse further donations. Among the reasons given were the unresolved Bhopal liabilities of Dow’s 100%-owned subsidiary Union Carbide, which is officially “an absconder from justice” in India, having failed since 1992 to attend court hearings in the city where it is accused of the criminal homicide of more than 20,000 people.
Bhopal protests have been cropping up all over the planet, where Dow least expects them. On February 17, Diane Wilson and others attended a Dow banquet at Lake Jackson, Texas where they were received with all the joy and hospitality Macbeth showed to Banquo’s ghost.
Bhopal campaigners turned up to picket Dow’s New Orleans office with some good looking posters and handed out information to passers by.
International Women’s Day saw an open-air protest in Berlin, and Bhopal supporters staged an action at a trade fair in Chicago where Dow was peddling its poisonous wares.
A new Union Carbide scandal broke in India today as furious Bhopal survivors protested against leaked plans of a shadowy deal between Carbide’s 100% owner Dow Chemical and the Indian Oil Corporation to supply ethylene glycol technology for IOC’s Panipat complex. The process, called METEOR, is thought to belong to Union Carbide, a corporation which dare not show its face in the country where it is officially listed as a criminal fugitive from justice, having failed for 13 years to turn up to the Indian court where it stands accused of the criminal homicide of more than 20,000 people.
The circumstances of the proposed deal are surrounded by controversy, and Bhopal survivors’ groups are lobbying politicians to investigate.
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An international coalition working to address the grave injustices suffered by half a million Bhopalis.
