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Mad Dow Disease - Living Poisoned Daily |
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by Ra Ravishankar
Email: ravishan (nospam) uiuc.edu (verified) |
03 Dec 2003
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On Dow Chemicals' refusal to accept its criminal and environmental liabilities in India |
What's common to Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein and Union Carbide? They
all gassed humans. The first two have acquired well deserved notoriety,
but in yet another instance of corporate malfeasance going unpunished,
the Union Carbide company (acquired by Dow Chemicals in 2001) has so
far escaped unscathed.
In the early hours of December 3, 1984, several tons of lethal methyl
isocyanate (MIC) leaked out of Union Carbide's pesticide factory in
Bhopal, India. More than 8,000 people died in the first three days.
The death toll has since exceeded 20,000 and an estimated 120,000
remain chronically ill.
Warren Anderson, Union Carbide's CEO at the time of the disaster, was
charged with culpable homicide (punishable with imprisonment for up to
twenty years) and declared a "fugitive from justice" in 1992. Both Union
Carbide and Anderson still face criminal charges in India but continue to
ignore the Indian courts and also the Manhattan District Court Judge's
ruling that Union Carbide "shall consent to submit to the jurisdiction
of the courts of India."
Given the poor safety standards at the Bhopal factory, it was a powder
keg waiting to explode. In 1982, a confidential safety audit warned of
a "potential for the release of toxic materials" and identified 61
hazards, 30 of them major and 11 in the dangerous MIC section of the
factory. Corrective measures were taken at Union Carbide's sister-plant
in West Virginia, but not in Bhopal. Furthermore, while all the vital
systems in the West Virginia plant had back-ups hooked to computerized
alarms, even the sole manual alarm in the Bhopal plant had been switched
off. Consequently, the sleeping victims were caught completely unaware.
On the night of the disaster, six safety measures designed to prevent
a gas leak were either shut down or malfunctioning. A crucial
refrigeration unit had been turned off to save $40 a day. This is not
all, though. Recently declassified Union Carbide documents revealed
that the company used unproven technology to keep costs down.
In February 1989, the Indian Government settled (without consulting
the survivors or their representatives) for a paltry $470 million
compensation with Union Carbide. About 95 per cent of the survivors
received $500 for lifelong injury and loss of livelihood and Union
Carbide was absolved of its civil -- but NOT criminal and environmental
-- liabilities.
This much was clear when in 2001 Dow Chemicals bought over Union Carbide.
Dow accepted Carbide's asbestos liabilities in the U.S., but has been
trying to lie its way through Carbide's Bhopal liabilities in India. To
add insult to injury, it claimed "$500 is plenty good for an Indian" and
refused to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water or health care,
or stand trial in India. Meanwhile, the tons of chemical wastes left behind
by Union Carbide have seeped into the local ground water system, so that
deaths and deformities (in newborn babies) have now become commonplace in
the gas-affected areas of Bhopal.
Soon after the accident, Barry Neuman prophesied in the Wall Street
Journal that Indians don't expect compensation for lives lost because
"the certainty of reincarnation satisfies the Hindus; for the Muslims,
what God wills, God wills" (quoted on ABC NEWS, September 4, 2002).
It turned out that not just Indians, but social justice activists
everywhere -- be they accident survivors like Rashida Bee and Champa
Devi Shukla who lost immediate members of their families to the disaster
and themselves suffer from several ailments or Texan fisherwoman Diane
Wilson -- do care for justice and will settle for nothing less.
The Bhopal disaster, rightly dubbed the Hiroshima of the chemical industry,
epitomizes the worst of corporate globalization. The 19 year-old struggle
for justice is one of the longest ever against a transnational corporation
and reinforces the need for enforcing corporate accountability. As the
survivors' legal counsel Raj Sharma says, "Criminal trial of corporate CEOs
is not merely a necessary legal measure for justice in Bhopal" but "an
essential prerequisite for tackling the growing crisis of corporate crime."
Despite the many hurdles (including the U.S. and Indian Governments and the
powerful business interests that control them), an International Campaign
for Justice in Bhopal continues to gain in strength.
The Bhopal movement has received the support of AFL-CIO, Corporate Watch,
Farm Workers of America, Greenpeace, Jobs With Justice, the Living Wage
Campaign, National Association of Working Women and United Steel Workers
of America, among others. This July, 18 members of the U.S. Congress
(including Dennis Kucinich) accused Dow of being a "party to the ongoing
human rights and environmental abuses in Bhopal." They also took Dow and
Carbide to task for the companies' "blatant disregard for the law."
In the run up to the 19th anniversary of the disaster, a recent faculty
petition for justice in Bhopal (http://www.petitiononline.com/dirtydow)
has gotten more than 170 endorsements, including those of such luminaries
as Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Robert Jensen, Mahmood Mamdani, Biju
Mathew, Michael Parenti and Vijay Prashad. And this December 3rd is being
observed as Global Day of Action Against Corporate Crimes
(http://www.bhopal.net/gda) in more than 20 campuses across the United
States.
As to what lies ahead, Rashida Bee puts it succinctly: "When Governments
and Corporations do not live up to their obligations, it is only
solidarity among workers, trade unions and people's groups that can
carry us forward."
For information in this column and more, please check
http://www.bhopal.net and http://www.studentsforbhopal.org |
See also:
http://www.bhopal.net
http://www.studentsforbhopal.org
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