Five organisations of survivors of gas tragedy have demanded apologies from the Governments of USA, India and the State of Madhya Pradesh for the ongoing medical and environmental crisis affecting half a million people. They called upon these Governments to end the disaster in Bhopal before it enters its fourth decade next year.
In a jointly released statement to the media on the 29th Anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, the organisations led a rally of survivors of the disaster and those exposed to contaminated groundwater to the Union Carbide factory at the end of which they set an effigy of Dow Chemical on fire.
The marchers carried picture of US hacker activist Jeremy Hammond, sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, who exposed Dow Chemical’s snooping on Bhopal activists.
The effigy, that of a corporate executive with horns and a forked tail, bore marks of damage caused to Dow Chemicals in India including the criminal case on bribery, the blacklisting of Dursban, the cancellation of the joint venture in Gujarat and the gutting down of its proposed R&D Centre at Chakan near Pune.
Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh president Rashida Bee, who has lost six members of her family to the disaster, said, “The President of United States must summon the courage to express remorse for the US Government’s financing of the world’s worst industrial disaster through the EXIM bank as revealed through Wikileaks documents.
He must apologise for the blatant double standards of his Government’s responses to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the continuing disaster in Bhopal that involves two of USA’s largest corporations,” she said.
She said that a closure of the Bhopal disaster was not possible without the US Government agreeing to send Warren Anderson, former Chairman of Union Carbide and chief accused in the criminal case to face trial in India.
Balkrishna Namdeo of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogi Sangharsh Morcha sought apologies from the Prime Minister on behalf of the Indian Government for taking away victims’ legal rights to adequate compensation through the Bhopal Act and then continuing to downplay the health and environmental damages caused by Union Carbide and Dow Chemicals.
He said that the Prime Minister should personally apologise for appointing two known Dow Chemical supporters, Kamalnath and Chidambaran to the Group of Ministers on Bhopal that has failed to bring about any improvement in the situation in Bhopal.
“The Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh must express regret for failing to keep the three promises he made to the delegation of survivors on December 3, 2011 exactly two years back” said Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Purush Sangharsh Morcha’s President, Nawab Khan.