Anatomy ofa crime
against
AT THE FOOT Of this page is a picture Of a child being
buried the morning after a leak at Union Carbide's factory in the
Indian city Of Bhopal killed thousands in one night Of horror.
The photographer cried as he took the picture.
If you don't know the story of that night, it is of people
woken from sleep with a gas soo times more deadly than
cyanide in their mouths and eyes, of people choking,
blinded by an invisible fire that burned and tore at the
lungs until it drowned them in their own body fluids
On that hateful dawn, as heaps of bodies lay
in the streets twisted in their death agonies, who
Is in milk
could have guessed that 22 years later we would
still be burying babies in this city?
Today in Bhopal, 120,000 people are chronically
sick, ten people each month die from injuries caused
by the gases Of 1984. But the Story grows wickeder.
People Who were never exposed to Carbide's
gases are falling ill With symptoms similar to those Of
the victims Of 1984. In some areas near the factory, there is a
98% rate Of anaemia among women. Children are
liver damage.
being born Without fingers, lips and noses. The
cause is lethal chemicals in their drinking water,
poisons leaking from the now-derelict factory that Union
Carbide never bothered to clean up.
The death factory was not a single large building, but
a collection of chemical plants, offices and warehouses
spread over a 66 acre site. It was always a flawed project.
In the most dangerous units Carbideés US managers cut
costs by using technology their own report describes as
unproven and fraught with difficulties.
The risk, they decided, was 'acceptable'.
The Waste from the factory, thousands Of tons Of
deliriously toxic sludges, was dumped in vast open-air
lakes lined With plastic flimsier than a dustbin bag. Come
the first rains, they leaked, spreading poisons across fields
and into drinking water. Cattle died, people became sick.
depression,
umanity
Corporation in the US, which as 50.9% majority shareholder had
managed the factory and supervised the cost-cutting, first blamed
its Indian managers, then an imaginary terrorist group and finally
asserted that the plant had been sabotaged by 'a disgruntled
employee' — a claim it repeats to this day.
The human consequences Of these actions are
appalling. Half the women pregnant on 'that night' had
breathlessness
miscarriages. The months that followed saw a spate of
'horrific births', which continue to this day.
But if the original disaster can be called an accident, what
followed cannot, for Union Carbide abandoned its factory
leaving behind thousands more tons of poisons like lindane
and carbaryl in gunny bags and rusting drums. Mercury drops
still lie on the soil where they fell more than two decades ago.
While the factory grounds returned tojungle, 22 monsoons
washed the poisons ever deeper into the subsoil and into the
drinking wells Of people like the family Of Shahida Bee.
'My daughter-in-law had a son on IS March (2006).
The baby was perfectly formed, With a beautiful face,
nausea,
except the rest Of the head was missing,' says Shahida,
who was in Delhi recently with survivors who had walked 500
miles to ask the Prime Minister for help,
Like some 26,000 other people, Shahid* family have for
years been washing in and drinking poisoned water.
Carbide's private documents reveal that the company knew of
the danger as early as 1989, but kept denying that there
was a problem. It watched silently while local people,
many of whom were already victims of the gas, we
defects
poisoned a second time. It did not even clean up the
chemicals. Union Carbide, today wholly Owned by
Dow Chemical Of napalm and agent Orange fame, still refuses
to clean its factory. Since 1992 it has also been refusing
appear in an Indian court where it faces criminal charges Of
culpable homicide. It has been declared an absconder from
justice in India. DOW could easily afford to clean the
factory. It's ready to pay S2.2 billion to settle
Carbide's US asbestos liabilities, but says it is not
responsible for Carbide's Indian liabilities.
The diseases and illnesses suffered by the Bhopalis are
beyond description.
This figure illustrates a few, but cannot show the agony
of the girl who endures three periods a month, with pain that
causes her 'to flip about like a fish out of water'. It cannot
start to express the terror of mothers who know
their babies are suckling poisoned breast milk,
Frantic telexes from Bhopal about the leaking ponds were
ignored by bosses far away in America.
By 1984, with the factory making massive losses,
Carbide went on a major economy drive. 335 jobs were
culled. The maintenance staff was halved, safety training was cut
from six months to two weeks.
MIC, methyl isocyanate, the gas that leaked, is so volatile
that own safety regulations required its storage tank —
the size of a locomotive — to be kept at 0' C, but refrigeration
was turned Off to save Freon gas worth S37.68 a day. Half the
Skin
plant Operators in the fatal MIC unit were sacked.
Urgent Warnings from the workforce and growing public
disquiet, including four separate articles by journalist Rajkumar
Keswani predicting an impending catastrophe, were all ignored, as
were the alarming findings Of a 1982 safety audit by Union Carbide
engineers from the US. The cost-cutting continued. Old parts were re-
used to save money on repairs. A leaky valve and a worn washer
led directly to the disaster.
tingling
When disaster struck, not one of the factory's safety systems
working. The vent scrubber lay in pieces, dismantled for
repairs that were never to be completed. The flare tower was
turned off The fire hoses were too feeble to reach the escaping
gases. The public alarm siren did not sound. Union Carbide
Prakriti
nor the grief Of the young woman who told us,
•Babies born with a missing palate can not breast feed. Th
try, but all the milk runs Outof their noses.'
In 1996, we opened a free clinic in Bhopal to give care to
sun-ivors Of the gas disaster and those suffering from Water
poisoning. Our combination Of modern medicine, herbal
treatments, yoga postures, breathing and massage has so far
eased the suffering Of more than 20,000 people.
All consultations, treatments and medicines are free.
The clinic relies solely on donations from individuals.
Now that you know this awful story, we beg you, please
dig deep to help us carry on our work. As Shahida
says, 'In this world there's no justice, but there are
good people. That alone keeps us alive.'
FREEFONE 0800 316 5577 •ro DONATE NOW WITH A CARD or visit www.bhopal.org/dona,ions
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