Bhopal tragedy still festers 25 years on

VICTIMS CONDUCTED torchlight rallies in the central Indian city of Bhopal yesterday to commemorate their night of horror 25 years…

VICTIMS CONDUCTED torchlight rallies in the central Indian city of Bhopal yesterday to commemorate their night of horror 25 years ago when lethal gas leaked from the Union Carbide pesticide plant killing thousands.

Accompanied by activists, thousands of survivors relived the fateful night when some 40 tons of deadly methyl isocyanate seeped out of the multinational’s plant shortly after midnight on December 3rd, 1984, in what has become known as “the chemical Hiroshima”.

The disaster, undoubtedly the world’s worst industrial accident, killed between 8,000 and 10,000 mostly poor people within the first three days, according to the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research.

Over the past 25 years this number had risen to more than 15,000, but local victims’ rights activists say the figure could be double that. In a 2004 report Amnesty International put the number who had died in the Bhopal gas leak accident at between 22,000 and 25,000.

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Alongside, tens of thousands of others, many of whom continue to live wretched existences in slums adjoining the walls of the dilapidated pesticide factory, still suffer the effects of exposure to the toxic fumes and extensive contamination of land and water.

They also await the promised compensation a quarter of a century after their lives were wrecked in what has unfolded as perhaps the most callous and inhuman aspect of the catastrophe.

In order to claim compensation survivors had to prove that their ailments, like kidney problems, cancer and respiratory illnesses, were actually caused by the chemical that belched from the plant.

“People came and told us we could apply for compensation,” victim Laxmi Narayan said. They took our name down, but we never saw a penny.”

The Indian government, after initially demanding €3.3 billion from Union Carbide – purchased by Dow Chemicals in 1999 – agreed in 1989 to an out-of-court settlement totalling €470 million, or a mere 15 per cent of the original amount. This surprising settlement also absolved Union Carbide from any liability to clear up 350 tons of remaining toxic waste.

And though the 1989 deal also dropped all criminal charges against Union Carbide and then company chairman Warren Anderson, India’s Supreme Court reinstated manslaughter charges against him two years later.

They are still pending, but successive US administrations have made no effort to either find or book Mr Anderson, now 88, even though his whereabouts were revealed on different occasions by Greenpeace and a UK newspaper.

Meanwhile, toxic chemicals have leaked into the ground, poisoning water supplies in large parts of the city. This has resulted in locals developing cancer and other terminal diseases, for which nobody has been held liable.

In the 1990s survivors and families of victims were awarded an average compensation of 25,000 rupees (€359) to fund, in most cases, a lifetime of hospital visits.

But even this meagre amount never reached many awardees, soaked up by bribes paid to lawyers, middlemen and touts by largely illiterate victims.

The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) estimates that some 100,000 people received only interim compensation of 200 rupees per month for a brief period immediately after the disaster, but no final lump sum.

Many more received nothing at all, the consequence of red tape, corruption, and civil servants who rejected claims because names had been misspelled, said ICJB co-ordinator Rachna Dhingra.

No compensation has been awarded to those born with disabilities and those suffering from terminal illnesses contracted from drinking contaminated water.