GW66
Silent Witness
Twenty-five years ago
the people of Bhopal were subjected to a night of
unimaginable horror as the nearby chemical plant
released a cloud of highly toxic gas into the air,
resulting in thousands of deaths. Green MEP
Caroline Lucas was the first politician to push for
a statement of indictment against the company
responsible in the European Parliament, but they
are still to answer charges. Indra Sinha
looks back at the
disaster and at how Bhopalis are moving forward.
First, let us not speak of the Bhopal gas
disaster, but call it by its proper name –
the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal –
because the disaster was of the company’s
making, though it fell on the city’s
poorest inhabitants. The story of what
happened on ‘that night’, and the quarter
of a century of aftermath, can be told in
many ways. It could be a collection of
essays by specialists, each reflecting one
aspect - legal, medical, environmental,
political, the role of women (an
astonishing story and the subject of an
important new book by Suroopa Mukherjee),
engineering, management, globalisation,
pesticides and chemical weapons. Such a
collection might help a lawyer prepare a
case in court, but is frankly not much use
to us since the company will not come to
court, and no one seems to have either the
will or the power to make it.
It could be written from a journalistic perspective: human stories of pain and despair, to touch our hearts. A story like this, about a widow called Mehboob Bi, was once told to me by a friend. We were all in tears as we heard it, and immediately resolved to raise some money to help her. This won’t do either, because we have not time, or tears, to hear the stories of all half a million who were injured, and not enough money to give to each of the hundreds of thousands who live, coughing, ill, breathless, hungry, in conditions that most people reading this cannot begin to imagine.
Arguments and counter-arguments about who was really to blame and who should now pick up the pieces do not serve the survivors, who have been waiting twenty-five years for justice, fair compensation and proper medical help. All the institutions which might have come to their aid – the law, the courts, the medical profession, world health authorities, politicians – have for various reasons proved useless, and all those who had a duty of care – the company itself (first as Union Carbide and now in its new incarnation as Dow Chemical) and the governments of India and the state of Madhya Pradesh – have failed the survivors.
Given such a complete failure of the existing system, the only hope for the Bhopali sufferers (and for the avoidance of future Bhopals) lies in the direct involvement of ordinary people who still possess that most old-fashioned of things, a conscience. But without resources it is difficult to reach them.
Let’s be frank. Had the disaster happened in the West there can be no doubt that massive machinery would have gone to work immediately to help the survivors. One can imagine a vast public subscription, like that which followed the September 11 attacks in America. Government agencies would have poured in funds to make sure that survivors received the best possible medical care. Thought would have been given to the economic rehabilitation of those whose injuries left them unable to work. The company would have had to face the hostile questions of media, politicians and courtroom lawyers. The factory’s planning and design, its neglected condition, poor safety record and underdesigned and non-functioning safety systems would all have come under public scrutiny.
Responsibility for the disaster would long ago have been determined and justice exacted. Given the $5 billion fine levied on Exxon for the Valdez disaster in which no human lives were lost, the scale of compensation for the human deaths and injuries alone would surely have bankrupted Union Carbide. None of these things happened. The disaster did not happen in the West, but in an obscure Indian city, and the people worst affected, those whose communities suffered the greatest number of deaths and injuries, were among the poorest and most helpless people on the planet. The Bhopal Medical Appeal, two months after September 11, wrote: “The poor of Bhopal, no less than the victims of recent great catastrophes, were completely innocent. They did not ask for their lives to be ruined. They did nothing to deserve their terrible punishment, but after they died, thousands of them in one night of horror, no crusade was launched, no rock concert was staged for their benefit, nor were songs written about freedom. And their horror has never stopped. They are still dying in Bhopal.”
This is to the shame of all of us. And those of us who have taken it on ourselves to tell the story feel that shame most keenly. Bhopal is a story so outrageous that journalists who encounter it are amazed that it remains unexposed and unknown. When the Independent speaks of ‘rape’, the Guardian of ‘disgrace’ and Jon Snow of ‘a crime against humanity’, they are not talking about ‘that night’ when Union Carbide’s poisons left corpses heaped in the streets of Bhopal – but of what has happened since to those who survived it. Today, a quarter of a century after the gas disaster, more than 100,000 people in Bhopal are still seriously ill. People are still dying at the rate of one a day from injuries sustained on ‘that night’. Thousands lost their livelihoods. Some are now homeless beggars. Their breathless bodies no longer able to push handcarts and lift heavy loads, they have fallen into utter destitution and their families have learned the lessons of the abyss, binding cloths round their middles to give an illusion of fullness, giving children unable to sleep from hunger water to fill their empty bellies.
It could be written from a journalistic perspective: human stories of pain and despair, to touch our hearts. A story like this, about a widow called Mehboob Bi, was once told to me by a friend. We were all in tears as we heard it, and immediately resolved to raise some money to help her. This won’t do either, because we have not time, or tears, to hear the stories of all half a million who were injured, and not enough money to give to each of the hundreds of thousands who live, coughing, ill, breathless, hungry, in conditions that most people reading this cannot begin to imagine.
Arguments and counter-arguments about who was really to blame and who should now pick up the pieces do not serve the survivors, who have been waiting twenty-five years for justice, fair compensation and proper medical help. All the institutions which might have come to their aid – the law, the courts, the medical profession, world health authorities, politicians – have for various reasons proved useless, and all those who had a duty of care – the company itself (first as Union Carbide and now in its new incarnation as Dow Chemical) and the governments of India and the state of Madhya Pradesh – have failed the survivors.
Given such a complete failure of the existing system, the only hope for the Bhopali sufferers (and for the avoidance of future Bhopals) lies in the direct involvement of ordinary people who still possess that most old-fashioned of things, a conscience. But without resources it is difficult to reach them.
Let’s be frank. Had the disaster happened in the West there can be no doubt that massive machinery would have gone to work immediately to help the survivors. One can imagine a vast public subscription, like that which followed the September 11 attacks in America. Government agencies would have poured in funds to make sure that survivors received the best possible medical care. Thought would have been given to the economic rehabilitation of those whose injuries left them unable to work. The company would have had to face the hostile questions of media, politicians and courtroom lawyers. The factory’s planning and design, its neglected condition, poor safety record and underdesigned and non-functioning safety systems would all have come under public scrutiny.
Responsibility for the disaster would long ago have been determined and justice exacted. Given the $5 billion fine levied on Exxon for the Valdez disaster in which no human lives were lost, the scale of compensation for the human deaths and injuries alone would surely have bankrupted Union Carbide. None of these things happened. The disaster did not happen in the West, but in an obscure Indian city, and the people worst affected, those whose communities suffered the greatest number of deaths and injuries, were among the poorest and most helpless people on the planet. The Bhopal Medical Appeal, two months after September 11, wrote: “The poor of Bhopal, no less than the victims of recent great catastrophes, were completely innocent. They did not ask for their lives to be ruined. They did nothing to deserve their terrible punishment, but after they died, thousands of them in one night of horror, no crusade was launched, no rock concert was staged for their benefit, nor were songs written about freedom. And their horror has never stopped. They are still dying in Bhopal.”
This is to the shame of all of us. And those of us who have taken it on ourselves to tell the story feel that shame most keenly. Bhopal is a story so outrageous that journalists who encounter it are amazed that it remains unexposed and unknown. When the Independent speaks of ‘rape’, the Guardian of ‘disgrace’ and Jon Snow of ‘a crime against humanity’, they are not talking about ‘that night’ when Union Carbide’s poisons left corpses heaped in the streets of Bhopal – but of what has happened since to those who survived it. Today, a quarter of a century after the gas disaster, more than 100,000 people in Bhopal are still seriously ill. People are still dying at the rate of one a day from injuries sustained on ‘that night’. Thousands lost their livelihoods. Some are now homeless beggars. Their breathless bodies no longer able to push handcarts and lift heavy loads, they have fallen into utter destitution and their families have learned the lessons of the abyss, binding cloths round their middles to give an illusion of fullness, giving children unable to sleep from hunger water to fill their empty bellies.
Since the disaster, the city has experienced
epidemics of cancers, menstrual disorders and
what one doctor described as ‘monstrous
births’. Treatment protocols are hampered by
the company’s continuing refusal to share
information it holds on the toxic and
mutagenic effects of MIC - the main
constituent of the gas cloud. The other
constituents remain a mystery, since Union
Carbide and its new owner Dow Chemical claim
the data is a ‘trade secret’. For 17 years
now the company’s executives have also been
ignoring the summons of a Bhopal court to
answer criminal charges of ‘culpable
homicide’ for a death toll that continues to
mount and which, according to official
figures, already exceeds 23,000. While the
case drags on the question of just and fair
compensation for the victims cannot be
resolved. No one, it seems, can compel Union
Carbide or Dow to obey the law.
Many survivors received not a single cent in compensation for their injuries and years of suffering. Of those who have, more than 90% have got less than $900 – a typical sum being around $540. Of course it was never enough to buy medicines. Over twenty-five years, it works out at around 7 pence a day, which would just about buy one cup of tea, even in Bhopal. By contrast, the Times of India complained, Alaskan sea otters harmed in the Exxon Valdez disaster were fed airlifted lobster at a cost of $500 per day, per otter.
Today a new generation of Bhopalis is being poisoned by chemicals abandoned by the company at its now-derelict factory. In December 1999 Greenpeace reported that soil and groundwater in and around the plant were contaminated by cancer- and birth-defect causing organochlorines and heavy metals. A February 2002 study found mercury, lead and organochlorines in the breast milk of women living in nearby communities. Despite the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle applying in India as it does in the US, the company says it will not pay for the clean-up of the site.
Bits and pieces of this story have surfaced over the years in the media. (The Lancet has written on birth defects, New Scientist on revelations relating to shoddy plant design and ‘unproven technology’, the Indian Express has exposed the role of the Madhya Pradesh government in the ill-treatment of victims, the Guardian, the BBC, Channel 4 and many others on the poisoning of soil, water and drinking wells, and the company’s continuing attempts to evade justice.) The journalists know they are writing about an enormous scandal, but each has only a little bit of the picture. No one has ever brought together all the pieces, nor chronicled the survivors’ struggle for justice and dignity, which Outlook India described as ‘one of the most valiant anywhere’. In Bhopal, some of the poorest, most helpless people on earth, sick, living on the edge of starvation, illiterate, without funds, powerful friends or political influence, have for the last quarter of a century struggled for their lives against the world’s biggest chemical corporation, its allies in the US, Indian and Madhya Pradesh governments, its Indian tycoon friends, plus an army of hired lawyers, lobbyists and PR agents.
It’s a struggle of those who have nothing against those who have it all. Where many Bhopal survivors can barely afford one meal a day the company has limitless wealth. Since 2006 it has spent $300 million on lavish advertising portraying it as a caring benefactor of humanity. The company has been fined for bribing Indian officials, it is known to have lied, attempted to subvert democracy, bullied politicians and twisted the laws of two nations to avoid justice in either. The Bhopalis, seeking help from their own government, were instead abandoned to their fate, ignored by politicians, fleeced by corrupt officials, swindled by moneylenders and unscrupulous quacks, not infrequently arrested, kicked and beaten by the police for daring to protest. Every authority that owed the Bhopal survivors a duty of care has failed them.
Having nothing, and no one else to turn to, they were forced to help themselves, and discovered that the poorest slums were full of talent. From this humblest of communities has come a remarkable flowering of political intelligence, social service, medicine, art, science and music. They have set up their own innovative medical clinic, which has provided free first class medical care to almost 35,000 people and which has won international awards for the quality of its work. Everything they have achieved has been won against brutal opposition, in a context of struggle and suffering of which there is still no end in sight.
A great catastrophe, followed by years of sickness, poverty and injustice can overwhelm and crush the human spirit, or it can enable ordinary people to discover that they are extraordinary. We should all of us who profess to value freedom, dignity, justice and human rights, support the Bhopalis. We must bring pressure in any way we can on the Indian government to set up the Empowered Commission on Bhopal that it has long promised but never delivered, and on Dow Chemical to produce its subsidiary Union Carbide in court. It would also be a kindness to make a donation to aid the work of the clinic, which you can do by visiting our website.
Many survivors received not a single cent in compensation for their injuries and years of suffering. Of those who have, more than 90% have got less than $900 – a typical sum being around $540. Of course it was never enough to buy medicines. Over twenty-five years, it works out at around 7 pence a day, which would just about buy one cup of tea, even in Bhopal. By contrast, the Times of India complained, Alaskan sea otters harmed in the Exxon Valdez disaster were fed airlifted lobster at a cost of $500 per day, per otter.
Today a new generation of Bhopalis is being poisoned by chemicals abandoned by the company at its now-derelict factory. In December 1999 Greenpeace reported that soil and groundwater in and around the plant were contaminated by cancer- and birth-defect causing organochlorines and heavy metals. A February 2002 study found mercury, lead and organochlorines in the breast milk of women living in nearby communities. Despite the ‘Polluter Pays’ principle applying in India as it does in the US, the company says it will not pay for the clean-up of the site.
Bits and pieces of this story have surfaced over the years in the media. (The Lancet has written on birth defects, New Scientist on revelations relating to shoddy plant design and ‘unproven technology’, the Indian Express has exposed the role of the Madhya Pradesh government in the ill-treatment of victims, the Guardian, the BBC, Channel 4 and many others on the poisoning of soil, water and drinking wells, and the company’s continuing attempts to evade justice.) The journalists know they are writing about an enormous scandal, but each has only a little bit of the picture. No one has ever brought together all the pieces, nor chronicled the survivors’ struggle for justice and dignity, which Outlook India described as ‘one of the most valiant anywhere’. In Bhopal, some of the poorest, most helpless people on earth, sick, living on the edge of starvation, illiterate, without funds, powerful friends or political influence, have for the last quarter of a century struggled for their lives against the world’s biggest chemical corporation, its allies in the US, Indian and Madhya Pradesh governments, its Indian tycoon friends, plus an army of hired lawyers, lobbyists and PR agents.
It’s a struggle of those who have nothing against those who have it all. Where many Bhopal survivors can barely afford one meal a day the company has limitless wealth. Since 2006 it has spent $300 million on lavish advertising portraying it as a caring benefactor of humanity. The company has been fined for bribing Indian officials, it is known to have lied, attempted to subvert democracy, bullied politicians and twisted the laws of two nations to avoid justice in either. The Bhopalis, seeking help from their own government, were instead abandoned to their fate, ignored by politicians, fleeced by corrupt officials, swindled by moneylenders and unscrupulous quacks, not infrequently arrested, kicked and beaten by the police for daring to protest. Every authority that owed the Bhopal survivors a duty of care has failed them.
Having nothing, and no one else to turn to, they were forced to help themselves, and discovered that the poorest slums were full of talent. From this humblest of communities has come a remarkable flowering of political intelligence, social service, medicine, art, science and music. They have set up their own innovative medical clinic, which has provided free first class medical care to almost 35,000 people and which has won international awards for the quality of its work. Everything they have achieved has been won against brutal opposition, in a context of struggle and suffering of which there is still no end in sight.
A great catastrophe, followed by years of sickness, poverty and injustice can overwhelm and crush the human spirit, or it can enable ordinary people to discover that they are extraordinary. We should all of us who profess to value freedom, dignity, justice and human rights, support the Bhopalis. We must bring pressure in any way we can on the Indian government to set up the Empowered Commission on Bhopal that it has long promised but never delivered, and on Dow Chemical to produce its subsidiary Union Carbide in court. It would also be a kindness to make a donation to aid the work of the clinic, which you can do by visiting our website.
▾
▾