Bhopal Press Coverage
Bhopal baggage – Hoax doubly cruel for victims
By Larry Dohrs, AI Business & Economic Relations Group
Letter to the Editor, Seattle Times
December 9, 2004
Bhopal, climate change require shift from legal liability to moral accountability
By William Baue
Ethical Corporation
December 7, 2004
Yes Men Hoax on BBC Reminds World of Dow Chemical's Refusal to Take Responsibility for Bhopal Disaster
Democracy Now
December 6, 2004
Bhopal Disaster 20 Years Later: A Look at One of the Worst Industrial Disasters in History
Democracy Now
December 2, 2004
Bhopal Survivors Gain Allies in 20-Year Quest for Justice
By Jim Lobe
OneWorld US
December 2, 2004
Silent Night, Deadly Night
By Mark Hertsgaard
Dragonfly Media
December 1, 2004
Bhopal Doctor Remains on Case
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
December 1, 2004
Bhopal Victims Not Fully Paid, Rights Group Says
By Saritha Rai
The New York Times
November 30, 2004
World in Brief
The Washington Post
November 29, 2004
Victims of Bhopal disaster 'still awaiting justice'
By Edward Luce in New Delhi
The Financial Times
November 29, 2004
Bhopal Still Suffering, 20 Years On
By Randeep Ramesh in Bhopal
The Guardian
November 29, 2004
Amnesty International Press Release
India: Bhopal - Human Rights in Toxic Shock
November 29, 2004
Bhopal Survivors Gain Allies in 20-Year Quest for Justice
By Jim Lobe
OneWorld US
December 2, 2004
WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec 2 (OneWorld) On the 20th anniversary of the most lethal accident in corporate history, the survivors of the 1984 Bhopal disaster are finding new allies in their fight for justice.
Amnesty International this week released a ground-breaking new report on the continuing impact of the leak of some 27 tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate gas from Bhopals Union Carbide plant exactly 20 years today, while activist shareholders of Dow Chemical Company, which bought Union Carbide three years ago, vowed to press their efforts to have the company take responsibility.
Bhopal was the greatest human rights disaster arising from corporate negligence, said Amnestys secretary general, Irene Khan, who said the failure of U.S.-based companies to compensate victims underlined the importance of making multinational business accountable across international borders.
Companies have elected jurisdictions where governments are not strong enough, willing or able enough to enforce regulations, she said. The legal gap that allows this to happen must be closed so that a disaster like Bhopal is not repeated.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people residents of shantytowns that abutted Union Carbides pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, died within minutes or hours of the gas leak which the company has long insisted resulted from sabotage.
Since then, an estimated 15,000 more have passed away as a result of their exposure to the gas, according to public-health experts.
More than 150,000 survivors, including children born to parents who were exposed to the gas, suffer some form of chronic illness or damage caused by the incident including cancer, neurological problems, chaotic menstrual cycles, and mental illness. More than 50,000 of the survivors are considered too sick to earn a living.
In addition, community water supplies for more than 20,000 people were found to have been contaminated at the plant site with unsafe levels of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other toxics and heavy metals. The site was abandoned after the leak in 1984.
In 1989, Union Carbide settled a civil suit brought by the Indian government by agreeing to pay US$270 million as compensation to people exposed to the gas. The company insisted, however, that the payment was made out of a sense of moral rather than legal responsibility since the facility was operated by a separate Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), in which Union Carbide held just over one half of the stock. It said that, under the terms of the settlement, the state of Madya Pradesh assumed responsibility for cleaning up the site.
To date, the settlement has provided an average of less than $500 to each of about half a million victims. The same group is expected to receive another $500 each over the next year as the Indian government distributes the accumulated interest on the original payment.
But activists insist that $1000 does not begin to cover the actual medical and related costs incurred by victims over the past 20 years, let alone the loss of livelihoods and what the U.S. legal system calls pain and suffering endured by the loss of loved ones and the daily hardship of living with chronic health problems.
Its really a pittance, said Rajan Sharma, the lead attorney for the Bhopal survivors since 1999. He and other activists spoke Wednesday with journalists in the United States and India via a teleconference organized by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
While the original settlement was designed for some 100,000 victims, the settlement money has been spread over half a million.
As important, the settlement failed to cover either criminal or punitive damages which would almost certainly be awarded if the leak had taken place in the United States or other western countries.
If this had happened in the United States, theres no doubt that Dow Chemical would (be liable), said Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign.
Broader remedies have indeed been sought in a 15-year-old case against Union Carbide and its CEO at the time of the leak, Warren Anderson, who has been in hiding for some years. The company has also refused to appear before the court.
The failure of both defendants to respond to the case was the subject of a resolution tabled earlier this year in the U.S. House of Representatives by New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone (news, bio, voting record) and seven of his colleagues.
Its outrageous that this year marks the 20th anniversary of this tragic event and the CEOs of Union Carbide and its successor Dow Chemical remain absconders (from) justice, said Pallone last May when he introduced the resolution. It is unacceptable to allow an American company not only the opportunity to exploit international borders and legal jurisdictions but also the ability to evade civil and criminal liability for environmental pollution and abuses committed overseas.
He and his colleagues also sent a 23-page brief to a U.S. federal court in New York where survivors filed an action against Union Carbide in 1999. While the court dismissed the survivors claims on the grounds that the statute of limitations for personal injury had expired, an appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs could still pursue claims related to their exposure to contaminated groundwater and ask that the company be required to clean up the site.
On yet another front, a group of Dow shareholders are pressing their two-year fight for a resolution that calls on the company to provide a full accounting of possible liabilities it might face arising from the leak and the pollution of the site. At last springs shareholder meeting, the resolution gained the backing of the two largest state pension funds, those of California and New York.
Dow is feeling the pressure of public opinion, said Lauren Compere of Boston Common Asset Management which is handling the resolutions. The changing legal landscape (on corporate responsibility) means they will have to change their position and come to the table.
Compere noted Wednesday that Dow pulled from its website a statement that asserted that it had no outstanding liability for the Bhopal disaster after the shareholder group filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) (SEC).
The Amnesty report, Clouds of Injustice, details how Union Carbide failed to take minimal precautions with respect to the storage of ultra-hazardous chemicals; to set up an emergency plan to warn local residents; ignored warnings about the possibility of a chemical reaction similar that which caused the leak; and withheld information critical to the medical treatment of the victims.
It also assailed Indian authorities for failing to adequately protect the inhabitants before and after the disaster; take adequate steps to assess the risks to the local community; or to consult the victims adequately regarding the financial settlement.
Bhopal shows how readily some companies can evade their human rights responsibilities, said Benedict Southworth, Amnestys campaign director. There is a real need for global human rights standards for corporations.
The (voluntary) UN Norms for Business are an important step in this direction, but to hold companies accountable and prevent disasters like Bhopal happening again, it is imperative to have enforceable standards that guarantee redress for victims, he added.
Silent Night, Deadly Night
By Mark Hertsgaard
Dragonfly Media
December 1, 2004
On the night her world changed forever, Rashida Bee was 28 years old and had already been married for more than half her life. Her parents, traditional Muslims, had selected her husband for her when she was 13. He worked as a tailor, and they lived together in her parents' modest home in the industrial city of Bhopal, in central India. Bee didn't learn to read or write, and she ventured out of the house only when escorted by a male relative. It was nevertheless a full life; her extended family of siblings, nieces and nephews numbered 37 in all.
The fateful night came on a Sunday. Bee and her family had gone to bed after sharing a simple supper. But shortly after midnight, in the early hours of Dec. 3, 1984, Bee was awakened by the sound of violent coughing. It was coming from the children's room.
"They said they felt like they were being choked," Bee later told the online environmental magazine Grist, "and we [adults] felt that way too. One of the children opened the door and a cloud came inside. We all started coughing violently, as if our lungs were on fire."
From out on the street came the sound of shouting. In the light of a streetlamp, Bee saw crowds of shadowy figures running past the house. "Run," they yelled. "A warehouse of red chiles is on fire. Run!"
A few blocks away, a woman who would later become a dear friend of Bee's was also running for her life. Champa Devi Shukla, a 32-year-old Hindu, lived down the street from the pesticide factory owned by Union Carbide. She knew better than to believe the rumors about a warehouse fire.
"We knew this smell, because Union Carbide often used to release these gases from the factory late at night," Shukla later told me. "But this time it went on longer and stronger."
Shukla was right. An explosion inside the Union Carbide factory had sent 27 tons of methyl isocyanate gas wafting over the shantytowns of Bhopal. "The panic was so great," said Shukla, "that as people ran, mothers were leaving their children behind to escape the gas."
In the pandemonium, Bee too was separated from most of her family. She found herself running with her husband and father, but they didn't get far.
"Our eyes were so swollen that we could not open them," she recalled. "After running half a kilometer we had to rest. We were too breathless to run, and my father had started vomiting blood, so we sat down."
The scene around them was apocalyptic. There were corpses everywhere, many of them children. Those people still alive were bent over double or splayed on the ground, retching uncontrollably or frothing at the mouth. Some had lost control of their bowels, feces streamed down their legs.
Exactly how many people died that night will never be known; many corpses were disposed of in emergency mass burials or cremations without documentation. Bee remembers that as she searched for family members in the following days, "I had to look at thousands of dead bodies to find out if they were among the dead."
***
Perhaps the most extraordinary fact about Bhopal is that no one has faced trial for what happened that night. Even though Union Carbide's own safety experts had warned two years before of a "serious potential for sizable releases of toxic materials," the managers of the Bhopal factory had no system in place to warn and evacuate residents in the event of emergency. Indian government officials likewise failed to insist upon such basic precautions. And as thousands of survivors streamed into local hospitals that night, Union Carbide spokesmen actively denied that methyl isocyanate was poisonous, calling it "nothing more than a potent tear gas."
Despite all this, corporate officials have never answered in a court of law for their actions. Such an evasion of legal accountability would be inconceivable if the disaster had occurred in the United States or Europe. Had the victims been affluent westerners rather than impoverished Indians, they would have had their day in court long ago.
India's courts have tried to pursue justice for Bhopal, but they have been thwarted. In 1991, an Indian court ordered Union Carbide officials, including Warren Anderson, the CEO at the time of the disaster, to face criminal charges. After Anderson and the other defendants failed to appear, India's Supreme Court named them "proclaimed absconders" – that is, fugitives from justice – and pressed for their extradition. After sitting on the extradition request for years, the U.S. State Department refused it without explanation in September 2004.
Bhopal survivors, however, have never stopped pressing their demands for a proper trial, appropriate compensation for victims, and sufficient medical, economic and environmental rehabilitation for survivors. And in this 20th anniversary year of their struggle, they have gained new allies. In April, Bee and Shukla won the Goldman Prize, the biggest environmental award given in the United States. This week, Amnesty International has endorsed Bhopal activists' demands in a report launching Amnesty's first major campaign targeting a corporation for allegedly violating the human right to a healthy environment.
Amnesty's report, "Clouds of Injustice," estimates that 7,000 to 10,000 people died in the first three days of the Bhopal disaster and 15,000 more have died in the years since. Another 100,000 continue to suffer chronic, largely untreatable diseases of the lungs, eyes and blood. Meanwhile, a new generation in Bhopal endures an epidemic of infertility and grotesque birth defects, including missing palates and fingers growing out of shoulders, in part because of continuing contamination of the groundwater.
Bhopal thus ranks as the single deadliest industrial disaster of the modern environmental era. With a death toll of 22,000, it has killed more people than the Chernobyl nuclear disaster did. And its victims are still dying today, 20 years later.
***
Each Dec. 3, on the anniversary of the disaster, Bee and Shukla join other marchers who parade an effigy of Warren Anderson through the streets of Bhopal and burn it. Bee and Shukla continue to hold Anderson, now 83 and retired, personally responsible for the Bhopal disaster, which they insist on labeling "a crime" rather than "an accident."
"It was Anderson's criminal negligence and insistence on cost-cutting that led to the disaster," Shukla says.
Internal Union Carbide documents, released in the 1990s during the discovery phase of a civil lawsuit against the company, seem to support Shukla's contention. A 1973 document, signed by Anderson himself, notes that the technology that would be used in the Bhopal factory was "unproven." A safety review conducted by Union Carbide experts in 1982 warned of a "serious potential for sizable releases of toxic materials" at the factory.
John Musser, a company spokesman, confirmed the existence of the 1982 study but asserted, "None of the issues [it] raised would have had an impact on the fatal gas leak and all of the issues had been addressed by the plant well before the December 1984 disaster." The real culprit, the company insists, was sabotage.
Warren Anderson now appears to be living the life of a wealthy recluse, with luxury homes in Bridgehampton, Manhattan and Vero Beach, Florida. Company officials declined to provide contact information for him for the purposes of this article. But when Bee and Shukla were touring the United States last spring after winning the Goldman Prize, they considered trying to find Anderson and confront him face to face.
"We don't want him hanged or anything," said Champa. "But he has to understand what it means to be cut off from one's family, what it is to suffer alone."
"If we see him," added Rashida, "we will ask: 'If you are innocent, why are you hiding and not answering questions about what happened in Bhopal?"
***
Both Bee and Shukla lost loved ones in the disaster. Seven members of Bee's extended family have died, and her husband was left too ill to continue his work as a tailor. Shukla lost her husband and two sons. A daughter later suffered three miscarriages, a grandson died and a granddaughter was born with a cleft lip and a missing palate.
"The gas disaster was sudden, one night, but the last 20 years have also been miserable," Shukla says. "People still have pain and breathlessness, and now we are seeing cancers too. There is mental and physical retardation among children. Many women are sterile or never begin menstruating, so men don't want to marry them." A 2002 study commissioned by Greenpeace International but conducted by independent scientists concluded that Bhopal's groundwater contains heavy metals and levels of mercury millions of times higher than recommended. (Spokesman Musser disputes these conclusions, citing studies in the late 1990s by government agencies in India.)
One bright spot has been the founding of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic to treat survivors of the disaster. Its name translates from the Hindi as The Compassion Trust Clinic, for it was founded in the belief that compassion can create hope from despair. Since opening its doors half a kilometer from the blast site in 1996, the clinic has treated thousands of Bhopal victims by combining the best of both eastern and western health care.
The staff biochemist, for example, doubles as a yoga teacher. Yoga is central to the clinic's approach, as is Ayurvedic herbal medicine. Patients pay nothing for treatment, even though they get far more care than at the crowded public hospitals India's poor usually visit. First-time patients at Sambhavna have broken down in tears, the clinic's Web site reports, because "in 15 years no doctor had ever listened to their chests ... or taken their pulse ... during examination."
Yoga therapies have produced some of the most remarkable results. Chronic respiratory disorders are Bhopal gas victims' most prevalent complaint. But a two-year study Sambhavna conducted indicates that regular yoga produces significant improvement in lung function; more than half of all yoga patients were able to stop taking pharmaceutical drugs against breathlessness.
The clinic's staff includes community health workers who go door to door to monitor public health in Bhopal – a key task since official monitoring stopped in 1994. These surveys aid doctors by showing which diseases are increasing. More broadly, the surveys prove that, 20 years later, locals continue to fall sick and die in large numbers.
Sambhavna's holistic approach sees both illness and healing in social context. The clinic thus insists that the long-term solution to disasters like Bhopal is to eliminate hazardous chemicals from the environment altogether. Until then, "exemplary punishment" of corporate polluters is essential – not only to achieving justice for Bhopal but to preventing future Bhopals elsewhere.
***
Along with activists from around the world, Bee and Shukla are seizing upon the 20th anniversary of the disaster this week to launch a renewed campaign for justice in Bhopal and, more broadly, to demand meaningful international regulation of toxic substances and the corporations that produce them. The Web site of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, lists numerous planned actions and media events.
The most important development is the addition of Amnesty International to the campaign for justice in Bhopal. The human rights group's reputation for fearless evenhandedness lends extra weight to the conclusions its "Clouds of Injustice" report. The report charges Union Carbide with "serious failures" at Bhopal, including ignoring "overwhelming evidence" of safety problems before the disaster, withholding information from doctors and investigators, and trying to avoid its legal and financial responsibilities for the disaster by shifting corporate ownership and dodging court dates.
The legal case against Union Carbide is complicated by the fact that Dow Chemical purchased all shares of Union Carbide in 2001. Dow, however, denies any legal responsibility for Carbide's past actions. "Dow remains firm in its position that in acquiring the shares of Union Carbide it acquired no new liability," says spokesman John Musser.
This novel legal theory – since when can one company buy another company's assets but not its liabilities? – may soon be tested. Nitynand Jayaraman of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal says that activists plan to press the Indian government to include Dow Chemical in the outstanding criminal case against Union Carbide; the government could then attach Dow's assets if it refuses to appear in court. Gary Cohen, the director of the Environmental Health Fund in Washington, says, "Dow wants to expand in India, and we're going to make that very difficult," by raising questions about the trustworthiness of a corporation that refuses to heed a court summons.
Amnesty International urges that Dow Chemical, as Union Carbide's new corporate parent, take a series of actions to make amends. Those actions include: paying for a full clean up of the Bhopal site and its contaminated groundwater, standing trial as requested in India and paying full economic, medical and environmental reparations to the victims. More broadly, Amnesty echoes the activists' call for tougher regulation of chemical production, especially within impoverished communities and countries. "Clouds of Injustice" proposes that the United Nations adopt an "international human rights framework that can be applied to companies directly" to ensure "transparency and public participation in... the operation of industries using hazardous materials."
A further complication to this case is that Union Carbide did pay $470 million to the government of India in 1989 to settle all claims related to Bhopal. But there is much less to that settlement than meets the eye.
The $470 million figure was based on now-discredited estimates that only 3,000 people died at Bhopal; the actual death toll is at least seven times that many. What's more, says Bee, "Carbide made that settlement with the government, not with the people affected. We don't accept it." And $330 million of the settlement money has been tied up in legal wrangling instead of reaching victims. When India's Supreme Court ordered in July that the $330 million be distributed forthwith, activists appealed the ruling, arguing that victims deserve four times that much.
Independent experts, including authors Arun Subramaniam and Ward Morehouse in their book "The Bhopal Tragedy," have estimated the total damages of the disaster – including health care for survivors, compensation for families left without breadwinners and restoration of local ecosystems – at anywhere from $1.3 billion to $4 billion. Activists have filed a civil suit in the United States in an effort to force Dow Chemical to pay that compensation.
Whatever the exact amount that is owed, it's clear that the people of Bhopal have been terribly mistreated. First they were left defenseless against a horrific but predictable disaster; then they were given a legal run-around for 20 years instead of just compensation for their suffering. There are many shades of gray in life, but sometimes the truth is black and white: it is shameful for Dow/Union Carbide to keep ducking its obligations in Bhopal and shameful for the U.S. State Department to help it do so. Doing the right thing – standing trial and facing a court's judgment – may cost Dow/Union Carbide financially, but continuing to stonewall could blacken the company's reputation forever.
© 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/20627/
Bhopal Doctor Remains on Case
The Atlanta-Journal Constitution
December 1, 2004
Dr. Ramana Dhara did not breathe the lethal gas that spewed 20 years ago in Bhopal, India, but his life would never be the same.
Dhara, 50, now an adjunct professor at Emory University and Morehouse School of Medicine, was then a young doctor pursuing a career in Hyderabad. A shortage of medical staff prompted aid agencies to summon him to Bhopal to treat the gas victims who jammed hospital wards.
"It was a monumental disaster," said Dhara, of Snellville, who is attending the first major conference on Bhopal, beginning today in Kanpur, India. He then plans to travel to Bhopal --- as he does every year --- to mark the 20th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster.
"Bhopal became a life-changing experience for me," he said. "I was so horrified by it all. I could never forget."
Since the accident, Dhara has devoted his medical career to toxicology and occupational and environmental medicine. He gave up all else to study and publish papers on the long-term effects of the methyl isocyanate gas that attacked the bodies of thousands of Bhopalis. He earned a doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, completing a dissertation on Bhopal.
In the absence of proper victim identifications and documentation of medical problems, Dhara's work is invaluable, say activists in Bhopal. As the gas accident reaches a milestone this year, Dhara's campaign is getting a boost from international organizations that have reignited the tragedy as a poster child for chemical terror.
This week, the disaster will be commemorated in Atlanta and across the United States.
On Monday, the human rights organization Amnesty International released a report blaming both Union Carbide and the Indian government for failing to protect the residents of Bhopal, calling the disaster a rights violation on a "massive scale."
"Astonishingly, no one has been held to account," the report says.
The report says Union Carbide shamed America by ducking responsibility for cleaning up the site. On its Web site, the company says it has done an adequate job in cleaning up the plant and responsibility now falls to India's Madhya Pradesh state, of which Bhopal is the capital.
Wherever the blame falls, Dhara is determined to get medical help for gas victims.
"When a disaster of this magnitude happens, you realize the inadequacy of the health care system," he said. "My little practice had been inadequate in helping me to understand this."
One reason Dhara believes the gas victims did not receive proper follow-up care is the lack of scientific expertise in Bhopal, mainly in toxicology and epidemiology. The central Indian town, an overnight train trip south of New Delhi, lacked the medical centers of India's larger, more cosmopolitan cities.
Immediately after the accident, Dhara said, Indian scientists and doctors collected a lot of data on the gas. "But the will to really look at that data and publish conclusions has not been there," he said.
Another problem stemmed from anger toward Union Carbide.
Henry Falk of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was part of a U.S. medical team that traveled to Bhopal a few days after the leak. "But we were Americans. And there was a lot of anger against Union Carbide," said Falk, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "So it really never was easy to establish long-term investigations."
Falk and Dhara said medical studies were further impeded by legal proceedings against Carbide. Then-Chairman Warren Anderson is still wanted in Indian courts. A criminal case against the company is pending in a Bhopal court.
The Danbury, Conn.-based corporation settled with the Indian government in 1989, agreeing to pay $470 million in compensation. Only part of it had reached gas victims until the Supreme Court ordered the remaining $330 million disbursed in October.
Union Carbide sold its stake in its Indian subsidiary and then was bought by Dow Chemical Co. in 1994. Dow claims it is not responsible for the gas leak.
Dhara said what is desperately needed now is long-term scientific data to figure out what will happen to the next generations born to Bhopalis, who still have traces of poison running through their veins.
"This is vital in order to understand the needs of the gas victims," Dhara said. "And they themselves need to understand what happened." Photo Dr. Ramana Dhara is determined to get aid for gas victims. Graphic BHOPAL ANNIVERSARY IN ATLANTA
Tonight: "Corporate Responsibility." Discussion, music and candlelight vigil. 7 p.m. at Georgia State University, Room 215, General Classroom Building.
Thursday: Performances and screening of documentary film "Bhopal: The Search for Justice." Room 101, White Hall, Emory University.
Friday: Screening of documentary film "Bhopal Express" and discussion. Room 105, Instructional Center, Georgia Tech.
For more information, call Alka Roy at 404-358-2935 or go to Atlanta@aidindia.org. Graphic BHOPAL TRAGEDY
Twenty years ago in Bhopal, India, toxic methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant. Thousands of people were killed in the immediate aftermath; activists say thousands more have died since then because of gas-related illnesses.
1970s: Plant built at Bhopal, mainly to produce pesticides.
Dec. 3, 1984: Methyl isocyanate gas leaks from the plant.
Dec. 7, 1984: Warren Anderson, CEO of Union Carbide, arrested; posts bail and flees India.
Feb. 14, 1989: Final settlement for $470 million; criminal case against Carbide is withdrawn.
1994: Carbide sells its entire stake in Union Carbide India Ltd.
February 2001: Dow Chemical of Midland, Mich., acquires Union Carbide.
October 2004: India's Supreme Court orders release of all settlement funds to victims, which may be as high as $327 million.
Graphic includes a locator map of India with the capital city of New Delhi, as well as the city of Bhopal indicated; inset map of Asia piponts the Area of detail.
Sources: Union Carbide Corp.; Greenpeace; Indiatogether.org, ESRI / Associated Press
For Reprints in the Original Format: http://www.ajc.com/info/content/services/info/reprint2.html
Bhopal Victims Not Fully Paid, Rights Group Says
By Saritha Rai
The New York Times
November 30, 2004
BANGALORE, India, Nov. 29 - Almost 20 years after the world's worst industrial disaster, a gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal that immediately killed 7,000 people and sickened several thousand others, the victims are poorly compensated and the companies have gone unpunished, a new study by Amnesty International said on Monday.
In a report, "Clouds of Injustice," the human rights group said that a generation later, survivors still await proper compensation and adequate medical care.
"Astonishingly, no one has been held to account for the toxic leak and its appalling consequences - over 20,000 people have died and 100,000 people are living with chronic illnesses," Amnesty said in its report.
The Union Carbide Corporation, and the Dow Chemical Company, which acquired it, as well as the Indian government are evading human rights responsibilities, Amnesty charged. "Dow and Union Carbide both deny legal responsibility, with U.C.C. refusing to appear before Indian courts to face trial."
An estimated 7,000 people perished after a leak of methyl isocyanate gas from the Union Carbide plant on the night of Dec. 2, 1984; thousands more died later from complications arising from inhaling the lethal gas, the group said.
Amnesty as well as several survivors' groups urged Dow Chemical on Monday to clean up the contaminated water and soil, reimburse families for medical costs and face criminal trial in India.
Two decades after narrowly escaping death, Batulan Bi, 62, said she had waged an endless struggle to be certified a bona fide victim. As the gas enveloped the neighborhood, her husband fell unconscious near her home as she fled with her children. Her husband died three years later, after a protracted illness from inhaling the gas. Lawyers and middlemen took about half the 100,000 rupees ($2,200) she was paid as compensation for her husband's death.
Ms. Bi said her visits to doctors had become frequent as she suffers from breathlessness, panic attacks and joint pains. Her medical expenses are not paid nor does she receive compensation for not being able to work in construction as she previously did. "I do not want to be a living corpse; I want to live with dignity," she said in a phone interview.
Union Carbide said in a statement on its Web site, "The 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India, was a terrible tragedy which understandably continues to evoke strong emotions even 20 years later."
The company said that its legal responsibility was met in the settlement reached with the Indian government in 1989 and that the state government of Madya Pradesh took responsibility for cleaning up the site. The statement added that a team of consultants it had hired had conducted an investigation and concluded that the explosion could have been caused only by sabotage, an assertion that environmental groups have rejected.
According to Amnesty, neither Union Carbide nor Dow Chemical has cleaned up the site or stopped the subsequent pollution from the plant, which was abandoned in December 1984. Local residents continue to fall ill from drinking contaminated water, with respiratory disorders, gynecological problems, nerve damage and cancer, medical groups say.
"Bhopal is a continuing disaster," said Satinath Sarangi, managing trustee of Sambhavna Trust, which provides health services for survivors. "In many ways, people are in a worse state than the morning after the disaster," he said.
Most of the $470 million from the out-of-court settlement negotiated in 1989 by the Indian government with Union Carbide has yet to be disbursed to the victims. The government paid out $230 million from 1989 to 1998, intending to use the rest for cleanup and aid to residents. That plan was challenged by the survivors, who ultimately prevailed in court this year. The government began distributing the remaining $327 million - an amount enlarged by interest over the years - this month.
More than 90 percent of the 570,000 victims will receive 25,000 rupees ($557) on top of the 25,000 rupees already paid in compensation. "The sum is so paltry when compared with compensation paid in cases such as Exxon Valdez oil spill or even the silicone breast implants or tobacco cancer victims," said Rachna Dhingra, coordinator of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
Even the legal fight is far from over, said Amnesty and other campaigners. On Dec. 6, a court in Bhopal will hear a criminal case filed by a support group for survivors against Dow to decide whether it can be held responsible for the disaster and whether its Indian assets can be seized.
The Indian government is still pursuing Warren Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide.
In its report detailing the failings of Union Carbide, Amnesty said the company had not only stored the hazardous chemicals in bulk, but also failed to set up an emergency warning system. Later, it withheld information critical to treat the victims of the gas leak, the report said.
World in Brief
November 29, 2004
The Washington Post
* LONDON -- Two decades after a leak sent clouds of lethal gas into the homes of hundreds of thousands of poor Indians, the world has failed to either help the victims or punish the culprits, Amnesty International said.
The Bhopal disaster on Dec. 3, 1984, in which nearly 25 tons of methyl isocyanate escaped from a storage vat, is now known to have killed at least 15,000 people.
Two-thirds of the $470 million in compensation paid by Union Carbide, the majority owner of the plant, has yet to be disbursed by the Indian government, and no action has been taken against the company or its current owner, Dow Chemical Co., Amnesty said.
Victims of Bhopal disaster 'still awaiting justice'
By Edward Luce in New Delhi
The Financial Times
November 29, 2004
Twenty years after a gas leak from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal killed more than 7,000 people in the world's worst industrial accident, almost all parties - including the Indian government - continue to evade their responsibilities.
In a report released today, Amnesty International, the human rights group, details the slow progress in rehabilitating and compensating victims of the disaster and the failure of US and Indian courts to bring Union Carbide executives to justice.
The accident, which was triggered by the leak of methyl isocyanate, a lethal gas, into the slums adjoining the plant, has killed another 15,000 people in the subsequent two decades, Amnesty estimates. The fatalities have been caused by respiratory problems, breakdown of immune systems, breast and cervical cancer and neurological disorders.
Yet the site, Union Carbide's largest plant in the developing world, has still not been decontaminated. Independent studies show that the groundwater system, which continues to be used by slum-dwellers, remains polluted and that numerous health disorders continue to arise.
"In 1994 all government research on the medical effects of the Bhopal disaster were discontinued without explanation," says the report, Clouds of Injustice. "The full results of the research carried out have yet to be published."
In 1989, the government of India negotiated a $470m (€353m, £248m) out-of-court settlement with Union Carbide, which has since been bought by Dow Chemical. Owing to bureaucratic inertia and the slowness of India's legal system, $327m is still held by India's central bank in Mumbai.
Many of those compensated have spent all their money on medical treatment, since the Indian government has largely failed to make good on promises of adequate healthcare for the victims. Tens of thousands more await a single rupee of compensation.
"The government of India has failed to ensure survivors receive adequate compensation and medical assistance, or to prevent widespread corruption affecting the compensation process," it says.
Amnesty estimates the out-of-court settlement, for which the victims were not consulted, was a fraction of Union Carbide's true liability by international norms. Dow Chemical denies any liability. India continues to press for the extradition of Warren Anderson, Union Carbide's chief executive. His whereabouts are disputed.
Amnesty says the tragedy underlines the need to develop an international human rights framework that would govern the duties and liabilities of private companies.
Bhopal Still Suffering, 20 Years On
By Randeep Ramesh in Bhopal
The Guardian
November 29, 2004
Deepika Thani drew her first breath as the world's worst chemical accident flushed the air out of the lungs of thousands of people in Bhopal 20 years ago this week.
Just before midnight on December 2 1984, milky white clouds of toxic gas settled over the sleeping citizens of Bhopal. A lethal fog of poisonous gas was spewing from a pesticide plant owned by the American multinational Union Carbide.
Within hours, thousands died and tens of thousands lined hospital wards suffering from blindness, skin complaints and breathing difficulties. Born in a city of funerals, Deepika arrived after her mother had inhaled the deadly fumes that infiltrated homes during the night.
Approaching her 20th birthday, Deepika weighs just 33kg (73lb) and is a little more than 1.3 metres (4ft 6in) tall. Her periods, which started last year, are erratic and she suffers from dizzy spells. She is unable to concentrate for long and has yet to finish school.
Her family blames the "poison" for stunting her growth. "The gas has meant she has not developed normally," says her father, Kanhaiyalal Thani.
Deepika's story is not atypical in Bhopal, where at least half a million people were exposed to the toxic fumes and the legacy of the disaster claims more lives every day. Yet little appears to have been done to chart the gathering calamity. The Indian government stopped all research on the medical effects of the disaster a decade ago without explanation. More than 100,000 children of the victims have no medical cover.
There is a growing body of work to suggest that the ramifications might be far greater than first thought. Last year a study by the American Medical Association found that boys who were either exposed as toddlers to gases from the Bhopal pesticide plant or born to exposed parents were prone to "growth retardation".
"We are only just beginning to see the results of what the gas did to the human body," says Satinath Sarangi of the Sambhavana Trust, which helps to rehabilitate victims. "What we have seen are shorter children with smaller heads. Unfortunately, there is very little official reaction to another generation's suffering."
According to the local administration, 3,000 people died on the night of the gas leak, but this is widely considered to be a gross underestimate. Hundreds of thousands fled Bhopal and no one knows how many did not return. Army trucks dumped unclaimed bodies in mass graves outside the city. Families vanished without a trace. Amnesty International believes the death toll was at least 7,000 and local doctors estimate it could be 15,000.
What is not in dispute is that the tragedy is still claiming new victims. Campaigners say the overall death toll exceeds 20,000, with a further half a million debilitated by chronic illness. The city's miscarriage rate is seven times the national average and its hospitals overflow with patients with respiratory illnesses and cancer.
"What you had was a gas that significantly reduced the body's immune system and laid it open to disease," says Shyam Agrawal, the director of the Navodaya oncology centre in Bhopal, who treated the sick and dying 20 years ago as a medical student. "Within India, Bhopal has one of the highest lung cancer rates in men, while women show very high rates of breast and cervical cancer. The cancer rates are significantly higher in gas-affected populations."
Despite this many survivors await adequate compensation. They say doctors' bills have long consumed small handouts meant to alleviate a lifetime's suffering.
Sitting outside her home in the rubbish-strewn alleys of Jai Prakash Nagar, 70-year-old Alia Bano recounts the night she lost 10 family members. "I still cannot breathe and stand up properly. My eyesight has never come back. I lost everything that night. All the government gave was 25,000 rupees [about £310] but that was used up long ago on medicines. Tell me, how will I live now?"
When Union Carbide finally left the city in 1999, it left behind thousands of tonnes of chemicals, toxins that have sunk into the soil and leached into the water supply.
Storage tank 610 sits near the rusting skeleton of the main complex. It was from here that the plume of methyl isocyanate, or MIC, shot into the sky. Four key safety measures failed that night, including the plant's cooling system and its flare tower, which could have burned off the gas.
When MIC is inhaled it produces an extremely acidic reaction, which attacks the internal organs, especially the lungs. This stops oxygen entering the blood, and victims drown in their own body fluids.
Union Carbide had been slowly running the plant down as the expected profits from its pesticide Sevin failed to materialise. The company maintains the disaster was due to sabotage.
Today, children play cricket and cows graze amid the rusting pipes, mounds of bagged waste and inky black pools of sulphurous smelling liquid. Tests of the water in nearby slums have found levels of contamination 500 times higher than the maximum recommended by the World Health Organisation. Greenpeace says decommissioning the plant would cost $30m (£15m).
There are no signs of decontamination work. Although India's supreme court ruled in May that clean water must be provided to nearby residents, a quick trip around the wooden shacks reveals women carrying buckets of oily black water home to wash with and drink.
Astonishingly, no one has been held to account for the disaster. Many in Bhopal say they are still fighting for justice.
The Indian government is still pursuing Warren Anderson, the former chief executive of Union Carbide, who keeps a low profile in retirement on Long Island and in Florida. He was briefly detained by Indian police in 1984 before being released on bail, and has never returned to the subcontinent. In Bhopal, many walls carry the words "Hang Anderson".
Makan Lal Vishwakarma, who still suffers from headaches, says: "I can remember the dead on the roads, the smell of chillis burning my breath, people choking on their own vomit. I will never forget that night. Neither should Union Carbide or Mr Anderson."
Union Carbide says the matter is closed, and it "worked diligently to provide aid to the victims and set up a process to resolve their claims". The company, now part of the world biggest chemical firm, Dow Chemicals, says it bears no liability for the site as it has since sold up and left India.
Union Carbide used the money to build a hospital in Bhopal and paid a lump sum of $470m in an out-of-court settlement with the Indian government in 1989. This saw 99% of victims receive about £300 in compensation more than decade ago. They should receive the same again in the coming months.
The legal fight, say campaigners, is not over. This week a Bhopal court will hear whether Dow, with yearly sales of $32.6bn, can be held responsible for the Bhopal plant. If the judge rules against the company, Dow's Indian assets could be seized.
"In New York after 9/11 there was compensation, punishment and clean-up in a just a few months," says Abdul Jabbar, who runs the Bhopal Women Gas Victims' Industrial Association. "In Bhopal, after 20 years, we have nothing."
