Thousands march to mark Bhopal disaster
Thousands of civil rights activists, survivors and other protesters gathered in Bhopal today to mark the 20th anniversary of the world’s worst industrial accident and demand justice for hundreds of thousands of people still suffering in the aftermath.
A leak of 40 tons of poisonous gas from a Union Carbide pesticide plant on December 3, 1984 killed about 15,000 people in the central Indian city and affected some 555,000 more.
For the past two days thousands of protesters, along with victims who fled the city after the accident, have returned to Bhopal. Trains and buses were crowded with people who wanted to participate in events marking the anniversary of the accident.
Today protesters are marching march through the main streets of Bhopal before holding a public meeting outside the abandoned Union Carbide plant.
US chemical company Union Carbide, which was bought by Michigan-based Dow Chemical Company in 2001, paid €376.3m in compensation under a settlement with India’s government in 1989. But only part of that amount has reached the victims.
“We will burn effigies of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical to voice our protest. These two companies have betrayed the victims of Bhopal,” said Rashida Bee, a disaster survivor who heads a women victims’ group.
Bee said the protesters would conclude today’s rally with a mass pledge to keep up the fight until victims’ demands for compensation, medical care and rehabilitation were met.
The protesters are also demanding that Dow Chemical clean up the plant site, where rusted pipes and pesticide storage tanks have collapsed or ruptured in the years since the plant was abandoned after the disaster.
“Lethal chemicals are still lying around at the plant, some in the open. Every time it rains these poisonous chemicals are leaked into the soil, affecting groundwater resources of the area,” Bee said.
The Bhopal gas leak was the world’s worst industrial disaster. Union Carbide insists the tragedy was due to sabotage by a disgruntled employee and not shoddy safety standards or faulty plant design, as claimed by many activists.
Union Carbide, in a statement sent to The Associated Press, said it spent more than €1.4m to clean up the plant from 1985 to 1994, when it sold its stake in Union Carbide India Ltd and the local company was renamed as Eveready Industries.
The company also says state studies indicated in 1998 that the groundwater around the plant was free of toxins and that any water contamination was due to improper drainage and other pollution, not Union Carbide chemicals.
Much of the anger of the victims is directed against India’s federal government and the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh, of which Bhopal is the capital. Bureaucratic delays and red tape had denied victims the money when they needed it most for their medical treatment, said Bee.
“They are treating us, the victims, like the culprits responsible for causing the disaster,” she said.
