[Singh]

Article from the Straights Times, Singapore local newspaper.

*lights a small candle in his corner of HLP....the anniversary passed 3 days ago......

The poison runs deep in Bhopal
Twenty years after the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the world's worst industrial disaster continues to ruin the lives and health of a second generation
By Amrit Dhillon
For The Straits Times

BHOPAL - MADAM Champa Devi Shukla has lost three members of her family to the lethal gas that leaked out of the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal on Dec 3, 1984. Her husband died of pancreatic cancer brought on by the gas, her son coughed up blood every day of his life until he could take it no more and committed suicide and her younger son, after prolonged ill health, dropped dead when he was 20.
   
In the neighbourhoods and slums of Bhopal, her story is not unusual. Families, lives, health and livelihoods have been destroyed. That night, when a toxic cloud created by a leak in a tank, drifted through the homes around the plant, those who inhaled it died an agonising death within minutes.

'I have fought death so long, nothing else matters any more,' says Madam Champa, who has fought for justice for Bhopal victims for two decades.

Her neighbour Rashida Bee lost her father in the disaster and has since lost five members of her family to cancer.

There has been no end to the cycle of death. A second generation suffers too - either those who were born to women who inhaled the gas and survived, or those who were exposed to it as children.

All over Bhopal, people suffer from respiratory problems, unusually high rates of tuberculosis and cancer as well as gynaecological diseases. The babies in Bhopal are often born with monstrous deformities.

Madam Amina Rashid lives in Arif Nagar, a shanty town next to the derelict and abandoned Union Carbide factory. Her one-year-old son, Ahmed, was born with a cleft palate. She is convinced that the water her family has been drinking is responsible.

For two decades, no one has cleaned up the area. When the company finally left the city in 1999, it left behind around 5,000 tonnes of chemicals. In slums such as Arif Nagar, J.P. Nagar and Kainchi Chhola, the rain washes the chemicals into the ground water during the monsoon, contaminating the local wells.

'We know it's lethal, this water, but what can we do? We've been told it has high levels of mercury, but it's the only source we have,' says Madam Amina.

Local doctors and researchers at the Sambhavna Clinic, which treats Bhopal victims, say that babies here are underweight and undersized, with unusually small heads. Even more disturbing is a high incidence of paediatric cancer, polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), syndactyly (joined fingers or toes), babies with three eyes and hydrocephalus (fluid building up in the brain).

Many of the young children in Bhopal slums also look mentally feeble, with none of the lively curiosity or energy of young children.

Women have been diagnosed with painful, irregular periods and infertility. Girls reach their teens without menstruating.

Of the half million people exposed to the gas, an estimated 100,000 are partially or totally disabled and 150,000 require constant medical care. These survivors measure out their lives with pills, injections and hospital visits. A remark you hear often is 'the ones who died that night were lucky, we're dying every day'.

In the collective memory of Bhopal, the night of Dec 3, 1984, will remain a night of horror. When the pressure inside tank No. 610 rose to breaking point, it exploded, releasing 40 tonnes of a deadly chemical called methyl isocyanate.

The tank was nearly 90 per cent full, despite a safety rule stipulating that it should never be more than half-full. Whatever safety systems were in place at the Union Carbide factory failed to work that night.

The toxic cloud drifted across the factory grounds, enveloping the railway station and slums around the plant. Passengers on a train pulling into Bhopal railway station were horrified to see bodies piled high on the platform. As they got off, they, too, inhaled the gas and also died.

Families died while they slept. Those who were awake tried to flee in any direction they could from the gas chamber the city had become. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic. Some were trampled to death, others writhed in pain before dropping dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran.

Around 4,000 people were killed within hours. A further 20,000 died later. But these are just estimates. No one knows the exact figure because whole families were wiped out and had no living relatives to report their deaths. After a while, the Bhopal government stopped counting.

The vast majority of those who survived received only US$500 (S$820) each. In 1989, India's Supreme Court ordered Union Carbide to pay US$470 million in compensation. It took years for people to get this money. By the time it came, many victims had spent many times that amount on medical treatment.

The disaster's aftermath
# 40 tonnes of methal isocynate leaked.
# 4,000 people died immediately.
# 20,000 more have died - up to 1992, when the government stopped recording the statistics.
# 150,000 people still suffer gas-related ailments.
# 5,000 tonnes of chemical waste still lie in, and around, the plant.
# Most victims have received about US$500 each.
# Many have spent many times that amount on medical treatment.

'There are people who will need medical treatment for the rest of their lives. There are thousands of families where the breadwinner is an invalid and no income is coming in, so this money was ludicrously inadequate,' says activist Abdul Jabbar. His lungs were permanently damaged in the tragedy.

In 1999, the company handed the plant site back to the Bhopal government without cleaning it up. Photographs of the inside of the plant have revealed, amid the skeletons of rotted pipework, mounds of bagged chemical waste and small puddles of deadly mercury.

Meanwhile, Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide in 2001 but refused to clean the site, saying that it had no responsibility for the earlier entity's liabilities.

That is not how local people or Greenpeace activists see it. 'It should be Union Carbide and not the Indian taxpayer who should pay for the clean-up - this is the principle of 'the polluter pays',' says Mr Namrata Chowdhary, media officer with Greenpeace India.

A test this month of the drinking water carried out by a BBC team found that the sample had levels of contamination 500 times the maximum limits recommended by the World Health Organisation. The poisoning continues.

No one even knows exactly what long-term effects methyl isocyanate has on humans. Some Bhopal doctors are studying the phenomenon, but on their own, as they have no funding. The authorities have ignored the subject altogether. The Indian Council of Medical Research stopped its studies in 1994 without publishing anything.

In 1992, the Bhopal government stopped registering gas-related deaths altogether. 'In Hiroshima, they are registering radiation-related deaths even now,' says Mr Jabbar angrily. 'But India doesn't seem to care about its own people.'

Dr Satinath Sarangi, who runs the Sambhavna Clinic for victims, believes the callousness of the Bhopal and federal governments is deliberate. 'They don't want it to be known that Union Carbide has destroyed the health of two generations and possibly a third.'

Twenty years on, the courts in Bhopal will decide shortly whether Dow Chemical officials should face criminal charges - including manslaughter - over the disaster.

Such a decision may be astonishingly late, but for Madam Rashida Bee, it is profoundly important. 'People all over the world fight for justice even half a century after their suffering. Look at the Holocaust. Although we'll never get over what happened to us, it will help if the guilty are tried for what they did,' she says.

[pyro-manic]

That's horrible. I'd never heard of the disaster until there was an item on the news last week, but that's just  horrible. Doesn't surprise me that Dow won't clean it up, though. They're a typical mega-rich multinational. They do anything to make money, and don't give a toss about the consequences...

I suppose that there were bound to be massive casualties in the event of an accident, with such a high population density in close proximity to the plant. And India isn't exactly known for it's health and safety laws...

[aldo_14]

I'm obviously  too young to remember this happening, but I find it pretty shocking that I hadn't heard of it until the 20th anniversary.... we (the UK in particular, the western world in general) should remember, yet we don't.

[Clave]

I remember it on the news, nasty, nasty, stuff...

It's incredible how long this has continued.  It's like the aftermath of Chernbyl, but at least the Russians moved most of the people away from the place...

It is a government failing the people.  They should have forced an evacuation and re-housing, no matter what the protest, then fenced the place off for good...

[pyro-manic]

Or kicked the crap out of Union Carbide with massive fines until they cleaned it up.

Accountability. It was UC's fault. They have those deaths on their hands. They should be made to pay the penalty for those deaths.

[Jetmech Jr.]

They should be made to swim in all those poisons they left in the area

[Flipside]

My sympathies are with you Singh. It's just another example that people are, to corporations, statistics to be added or subtracted from sums as required.

It's utterly disgusting that UC can fart around for so long regarding 1000's of deaths that are on their hands and no-one elses. Personally, I would could call it muder by negligence. I'm quite convinved that UC thought 'Well, thousands in India die each year, so we don't have to be careful about safety, no-one will notice anyway'.

[karajorma]

I've got to say that India not getting compensation was partly their own stupid fault.

When the head of Union Carbide visited after the tragedy the chief of police arrested him for manslaughter. The US embassy instantly put pressure on the indians to release him and when he was bailed out he instantly skipped the country.

Anyone here think the survivors would have only got $300 each if the head of Union Carbide had still been awaiting trial in Bhopal at the time?

BTW Makes me feel old to say I actually remember this happening

[Flipside]

Same here, worse luck

It was silly of India to let him go, they actually had a solid case against him for deliberate negligence iirc, but politics got in the way, as always.