Cockburn
/ St. Clair"s Scorching New History of a Decade of War
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3 / 4, 2004
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Hans
Once They Were Sweethearts: Cheney,
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Adventures in Fuel Efficiency
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St. John
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Another Times Plagiarism Scandal?
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Chomsky and Zinn Plan to Vote Nader
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Call Center ID Hypocrisy
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Barry
Bonds vs. Boston: "A Flea Market of Racism"
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The
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The Road to Abu Ghraib
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The
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Nuclear Plants in US Protectorate of Iraq?
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John L. Hess
Clinton Exhales
Pedro Marset/Ex-Solidarity
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Lucson
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Anderson
Frozen Gringos
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Weekend
Edition
July 3/4, 2004
Two
Survivors Speak Out
"We
Want Real Justice for Bhopal"
By
SNEHAL SHINGAVI
On December 2, 1984, a leak of lethal
methyl isocyanate gas from a Union Carbide pesticide factory
spread silently through the streets of Bhopal, India. Within
days, some 8,000 people had died from direct exposure to the
gas. Another half a million people suffered injuries, and at
least 150,000 people--including children born to parents who
were exposed to the poison gas--continue to suffer ill effects.
Bhopal is the worst industrial
disaster in history, and the blame for it lies squarely at the
door of Union Carbide. Safety measures designed to prevent a
gas leak were either malfunctioning--or shut down to save on
costs. The factory's warning safety siren was turned off--guaranteeing
that there would be many more victims who were overcome without
warning.
But Union Carbide has never
been punished. It paid a pittance to the Indian government as
a settlement--amounting to less than $550 for each survivor.
And it abandoned the plant, leaving behind tons of toxic chemicals
and contaminated groundwater. The Indian government has implemented
various schemes such as economic rehabilitation centers that
were supposed to provide training and economic support, but these
jobs don't provide enough to raise a family on.
Survivors of the disaster,
along with environmentalists and social justice groups around
the world, have been fighting for the last 20 years to force
Union Carbide--now owned by Dow Chemical--to take responsibility
for the horror in Bhopal.
In April, two survivors, RASHIDA
BEE and CHAMPA DEVI, were awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize--environmentalism's
equivalent of the Nobel Prize. They donated their award of $125,000
to a trust fund to provide medical assistance to Bhopal children.
WHAT HAPPENED in Bhopal
in the days after the leak?
Champa: Things were really
bad. We didn't know whether we were going to live or not. People
actually began to crave death. And sometimes you would even think
that the people who were dead were the ones that were actually
better off. Things were so bad then that it hurt most people
to take a breath or walk a step--most actually couldn't bear
the pain. It felt like your lungs were on fire, or that they
were about burst.
There were corpses everywhere--human
and animal. You couldn't even see really, because it felt like
someone was shining a light in your eyes or stabbing them with
a needle. It took several days before people were able to open
their eyes.
No one could even think about
anyone else. When people died, you said "thank God"
and kept walking. When children got free from their mothers,
mothers left them behind and didn't even look back. No one could
think about people who they had left behind or lost. Everyone
was running.
And then people were lost and
families were separated. You would go and look for people in
the morgues, to see if their bodies were with the other corpses.
People spent weeks sitting at home, telling themselves that their
loved ones would come back, even when they couldn't find them.
But you never found those people. You didn't even find their
corpses.
That's what it was like for
three days. People would offer charity. People would come from
neighboring towns and villages and offer us food and help. But
none of them wanted to touch the food that we made. The food
that was in our homes had been contaminated.
And when we were actually able
to look around our homes, we discovered that everything was covered
with a strange, white powder. There were these giant trees outside
with beautiful green leaves, but all of the leaves had now fallen
off. The fish in the lake died. There were so many dead fish
floating on the top that it looked like there was a blanket on
the lake.
All the buffaloes that we owned--all
of them in the neighborhood actually--died. Nor did any of the
goats survive. All of the animals died. And when the dead animals
began decomposing a few days later and released the gas that
had been trapped in their bellies, more people died. The government
didn't care. The doctors would ask the company for information
about how to treat the illnesses. But the company wouldn't tell
us. It still hasn't told us.
Rashida: Twenty years ago,
we hadn't even heard of Union Carbide, we didn't know what it
made, and we didn't suspect that it produced anything that could
harm us or poison us. Suddenly, on the night of December 2, 1984,
at midnight, a cloud of gas descended upon us like a tidal wave,
and in that night, 8,000 people were killed.
At midnight, when everyone
in Bhopal was sleeping, it suddenly felt like red chilies had
been rubbed in our eyes, and when my son got up in a fit of coughing
and opened the door, then suddenly our eyes began watering, and
we began coughing violently.
He heard voices from the outside
that screamed "Run! Run!" so he went out. And he saw
that everyone was running away and that the police station we
lived next to had been cleared out. All the jail cells were open.
So he ran home and told us that everyone was saying that a warehouse
used for drying chilies had caught fire, so everyone was leaving
the area as quickly as they could and making their way toward
the new city.
We decided that we had better
leave as well. There were 37 people in our extended family. Everyone
tried to keep track of everyone else, but it was impossible because
our eyes were watering, and we couldn't see. We managed to walk
away for some distance, but we couldn't walk any further, as
we were short of breath, so we sat down with my father-in-law.
And as we sat down, it felt like someone was stabbing our eyes
with needles.
Whenever we could open our
eyes--and it was hard to open our eyes--all we could see were
corpses, everywhere. Bodies of dead children. Corpses just lying
on the street. At 4 a.m., they announced that Union Carbide had
contained the leak and that everyone should return home. That
was the first time that we had heard that this happened because
of a gas leak at Union Carbide.
But we couldn't breathe, and
we couldn't see. And the more we ran, the more gas we were breathing.
So, we sat there for a while because we couldn't figure out how
we would get back to our houses. Then police cars arrived and
began taking a few people at a time back to their houses. We
were taken to one hospital, my father was taken to another hospital.
And the rest of the family had also been taken to one hospital
or another. We didn't know where anyone was.
Champa: When the explosion
happened, we were sleeping. At midnight, there was a commotion
outside. People were screaming, "Run! No one is safe!"
So we decided to leave. When we left our home, my husband was
leading the way, and he walked for a bit and then fell down.
He hurt his stomach. His bladder ruptured. There was urine everywhere.
After that, when we had gone a little farther, two of our daughters
began vomiting and had dizzy spells. We had to revive them after
they fainted.
There was a pipe nearby that
was draining water, and we didn't know what kind of water it
was--sewage water or what--but we took some cloth, dampened it
in the water and wiped our faces. And then we couldn't walk any
further. That's when the police came and told us to come with
them. They took us straight to the hospital.
When we got the hospital, I
can't even tell you how much it hurt. My eyes felt like they
were on fire--like there was a bright line being shined into
them, or I was staring into the sun and I couldn't blink. It
was unbearable. I couldn't stop the tears. And when we were able
to see, all we could see all around us were corpses--piles and
piles of corpses. The only thing you wanted to do then was get
away from there. You felt like if you stayed, you were certainly
going to be absorbed into the growing piles of bodies.
When we left the hospital,
it was around 6:30, and I was extremely dizzy and felt like I
was going to faint. At 8:30, when we got back to our homes, all
we could see everywhere were people lying on the ground--either
unconscious or dead. People were carrying some of the bodies
to the crematorium, loading them up on carts. At 11:00, we heard
people screaming again that Union Carbide was still leaking gas.
And then we couldn't stay. We didn't think that we were going
to survive.
Everyone was hurting. We walked
on until we came to a neighboring village. We found a house and
went inside and sat there quietly. We shut all the windows. At
7:00, we left and went back home. The entire neighborhood was
empty. But we had nowhere else to go.
Everyone was in bad shape.
And we couldn't see. We would hear noises outside of people leaving.
Young girls wandering in the street. So we sat there for a long
time. I don't even remember how we found food or what kind of
food it was. Ten days later, when I could see again, I washed
out my eyes. I started cleaning the house. I had to throw everything
out that had been contaminated.
And the children were really
hurt. One of my sons began bleeding, and we couldn't figure out
how to stop it. We took him to the hospital. He died on the fifteenth
day. My youngest daughter was paralyzed--half her body. You can
still see the effects of it on her face.
My oldest son has trouble with
his lungs. He began coughing blood. He became tired of living--you
know? He killed himself. My husband had injured his bladder.
We took him to the doctor, but he refused to operate because
the surgery was too dangerous. He ultimately developed cancer,
too, in his bladder.
Rashida: On the third day,
when we had recovered a little, we began searching for each other
in our family--trying to figure out where everyone was. No one
knew where they were--there were seven people still missing--so
we went to the hospital to try and find their bodies among the
corpses, because we thought we might find them there, but we
couldn't. And so we could only imagine that their bodies had
been thrown away somewhere in the communal graves that were being
set up in the area.
Eventually, on the fifth day,
we found out that they had been taken to another hospital in
a neighboring district, and we went to get them. And then, on
the 16th, when Bhopal was being evacuated , they told us that
they were going to clean up Union Carbide's gas mess so we all
had to leave. It turned out they were going to start production
again to squeeze out the last bit of profit--produce some more
of the pesticide. So we left to stay with our family to a nearby
village.
WHAT HAVE the last 20 years
been like?
Champa: Everyone is suffering--the
young and the old, everyone. The women are facing the worst of
it. They face the worst illnesses. Their children are born deformed.
They get cancer. Girls who are 15 look like they are six. Women
don't have their periods, and then they can't have children.
And the problems have only been compounded after 20 years. You
have children born with birth defects. Women have to watch as
their children endure all kinds of operations.
And parents have to worry about
their daughters not getting married. Potential grooms all wonder
about how their family line will continue if they marry women
who aren't having their periods or who give birth to deformed
children. Potential in-laws only worry about what they will do
if these girls get sick--why should they have to bear the cost
of caring for them and feeding them? The illnesses are getting
worse, too--TB, cancer. If you look at all these things together,
you can see why this is a women's issue.
Rashida: On top of that, we
were all desperate for medical care. No one knew how to treat
the illnesses from the gas, and Union Carbide wasn't providing
the information. They wouldn't tell us how to treat the illnesses
and save people. And so we began demanding information about
treatment.
And what Union Carbide did
was to take the 5,000 tons or more of the chemicals that we left
in the warehouse after the disaster, and it just dumped them
into the ground around the factory. As a result, the ground water
around the factory--and this is the primary source of water--is
so poisonous that even today it makes the 20,000 inhabitants
of the area sick.
Anemia has become prevalent.
Their lungs feel like they are on fire. They have serious trouble
breathing. They have digestive problems. They can't keep food
down and can't sleep. They even found poison in breast milk--mercury
and other poisons. And when infants drink poisoned breast milk,
what chance do they really have in life? That poison goes straight
to their brains and cause permanent injuries. When a child has
a brain injury, what meaning can his life have?
The children do not grow well;
they have growth retardation. A girl who is six years old looks
like a toddler. One who is 12 looks like she is 6 years old.
That's how severely affected the development of the children
is in Bhopal. And their illnesses are the kinds that affect the
children psychologically. They ask us all the time about how
they will survive and how they will live with these illnesses.
They hear that people develop cancer after ten years of exposure
to the area and the water. And the children are asking what their
lives can mean--what is the use of their lives. That's what it
is like in Bhopal.
CAN YOU describe the economic
conditions for people in Bhopal?
Rashida: In Bhopal, people
who used to earn 50 rupees a day can't even manage to work enough
to earn 25 rupees a day. And on top of that, they are afflicted
with all kinds of diseases, and they spend their entire earnings
on health care. They get some help from charities and the Sambhavna
Clinic, but they aren't able to eat because there is not enough
food. That's why we have been fighting for 20 years. We need
economic support at the same time, because we certainly cannot
depend on the government for economic support.
We've been trying to come up
with creative solutions to these problems and earn an income.
We've started a business, making handmade stationary--some women
will make the paper, and others will design the stationary. And
if that works, there is always a problem with marketing and figuring
out how to sell the stuff. For instance, we have also started
a business making paapads, and this is something that women can
do and do well, but we are always struggling to sell the stuff.
We are trying to find markets in Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore--and
make the paapad business successful.
But the victims' economic conditions
are unbelievable in Bhopal. The 20,000 people who live in the
area have difficulty breathing, and it's hard for them to work.
And if you look at that, you can tell that there's a desperate
need for economic aid.
The poor have never been able
to afford education. And now, the government has raised tuition
to go to public school, so there's not even an issue of education.
Plus, when the kids get a little older, the parents need the
children to help earn money for the family--to bring a little
bit home and help with the expenses. It's not really even within
the realm of possibilities.
WHY DO you think Dow Chemical
refuses to give you justice?
Rashida: When we heard that
Dow Chemical and Union Carbide had merged, they took on the responsibilities
for the explosion, as they were the new owners. So we also began
to demand that Dow assume responsibility for Bhopal--medical
care, clean up, etc.
We took these demands on a
march; we walked 300 miles to Mumbai, where they have a regional
headquarters for Dow Chemical. And we spilled red paint all over
the building as a symbol of the red blood of the people of Bhopal.
Dow Chemical would have to take responsibility for this tragedy
and give justice to the people of Bhopal.
When we met with the director
of the headquarters of Dow Chemical, he told us that they wouldn't
accept responsibility for Bhopal. We pointed out that there was
a settlement in America--a case in which Dow Chemical acquired
an asbestos factory that Union Carbide had owned, and in that
instance, Dow Chemical was accepting Union Carbide's pending
liabilities, because America is a powerful country, but this
is a poor country, and that was why Dow Chemical wasn't willing
to accept responsibility.
Why, we asked them, are you
following a double standard? A human life is worth the same,
whether they live in America or in the jungles of India. A human
life should be worth the same. They told us the difference was
that in America it was a question of an ongoing case, and that
in India, the case had been settled, but we said this was a lie.
We pointed out that there was a criminal case ongoing in India
and that they had to take responsibility for the disaster.
So we started a campaign in
India called "Jhadoo Maro Dow Ko" [Beat Dow Chemical
with broomsticks]. If Dow refuses to take responsibility for
the disaster in Bhopal, then we are going to sweep them off the
face of the earth. You all might know what a "jhadoo"
[broom] is, but you may not understand its significance. A jhadoo
is something that you use to clean up the house. And when a woman
gets upset, the first thing that she reaches for is her jhadoo.
She reaches for her jhadoo when she is dealing with domestic
violence or other kinds of oppression. So the women picked up
their brooms to deal with Dow Chemical and their mess.
We were saying to them, "Either
take responsibility for what happened in Bhopal, or we will sweep
you up like so much rubbish. We won't let you do business anywhere."
And this, you know, is the kind of "clean up" that
can only be done with a jhadoo.
Champa: In 2000, we went to
their headquarters with 5,000 jhadoos. We took contaminated water
and contaminated soil with us, too, and we asked them if they
would be willing to drink our water.
They called us inside and took
our water and our soil and our brooms, and they said to us, "We
feel for you." And we said, "What do you mean you feel
for us?" And they said, "No, we feel your pain."
And I said, " No, you don't feel my pain. It wasn't your
family that died. It was my family that died. You don't feel
any pain. Your company doesn't want to give us justice."
We don't think they will be
able to put us off forever. You know, more and more people are
becoming aware of what is going on. We are trying to wake people
up. And once you have a population that is awake and willing
to fight, nothing can stop you.
WHAT WOULD you say to Warren
Anderson, the former chair of Union Carbide at the time of the
Bhopal disaster, if you ever met him?
Champa: We don't want Warren
Anderson put to death. We want to see him put in a dark cell
somewhere, in prison. We want him to feel what we felt--when
we were separated from our children, when our husbands died,
when we couldn't see our families any more. That's what we want
Warren Anderson to feel.
Rashida: We have four demands
for Dow Chemical:
One, bring Warren Anderson
and Union Carbide to India to face the ongoing criminal case
in India. And we want the government of India to punish them
such that every company will know that the same thing will happen
to them should another Bhopal happen in India, or if they decide
to cut-and-run.
Two, Dow Chemical [must] take
responsibility for the gas-related illnesses and other illnesses
that happened after the explosion--and responsibility, for instance,
for the women who were young when the explosion happened who
are now ill, their children have birth defects or they are unable
to have any children at all. Dow Chemical should have to be responsible
for the health of two generations of victims in Bhopal.
Three, the economic rehabilitation
programs have ended, so Dow Chemical should be responsible for
the job training of the people of Bhopal who are exposed and
sick.
And four, Dow Chemical should
clean up the contaminated soil and groundwater.
There are still 600,000 people
suffering from gas-related illnesses. And the economic rehabilitation
that we were promised in 1984 hasn't really happened. Only 83
of us are currently employed in these economic rehabilitation
centers. The government has reneged on its promises.
That was the slogan we raised
as we marched from Bhopal to Delhi. And even though the courts
have ruled that we are to be made regular employees, we have
yet to be made regular employees--we only make half of what the
other workers make. And that's why we want the company to take
full responsibility for the problems that we are facing.
HOW DID you become an activist?
Rashida: My husband is a tailor,
but he couldn't work because he had a hard time breathing after
what the gas had done to his lungs. He was coughing all the time
and had chest pains, and so he couldn't work the machine. And
my father was coughing up blood. There were all kinds of problems
at home--all the people who earned money in our family were ill
and couldn't work. And we had never even stepped foot outside
our homes until then, and we had no idea what the world was like
or how to earn money or anything.
When we went to work in the
economic rehabilitation centers, this was the first time that
we discovered that we weren't alone. We found out that every
woman, each of our sisters, was facing the same problems. Every
house either had someone who had died or someone who was ill.
And in each instance, it was
the women who were trying to solve these problems. There were
also difficulties that we faced at the economic rehabilitation
centers, too. So this became the basis for us to form a labor
union. There were a hundred women members--50 Muslims and 50
Hindus. And everyone resolved that they would work together in
this struggle.
In this way, we organized all
40 centers--at all 40 centers, there were mostly women workers.
There were all kinds of jobs--food preparation, leather work,
sewing. In addition to our own labor issues, we began working
to solve the problems that resulted from the explosion. And that
was when we began campaigning to extradite Anderson--to bring
him back to India and teach him a lesson after committing such
a horrible crime and running away.
He should be brought back to
Bhopal and punished so severely that other companies should be
afraid of doing anything like this in India. Other companies
should always be forced to think that the penalties that Anderson
faces and the company faces could be penalties that they will
face, too, if they make unsafe facilities or produce hazardous
chemicals. That's what we wanted. And so we began demanding that
the Indian government extradite Anderson and bring him to India
to face justice.
CAN YOU describe your experiences
with other environmental movements in India?
Champa: When a multinational
comes to India, it deals with the government. The companies get
rich, the politicians' wallets get fat, but the poor--the poor
suffer. The poor get poorer. Whenever these factories are set
up, they are always set up in poor neighborhoods. They aren't
set up next to the homes of millionaires or politicians. And
so when there are disasters or explosions, it's the poor that
die. Not the rich. Not the politicians.
And that's why corporations
and politicians will never be able to feel our pain. The poor
feel the pain of the poor. The things that have happened to us
in Bhopal are exactly like the things that have happened to people
in Pondicherry and Patancheru. It's very important, you see,
to fine these corporations. If these corporations were fined,
other corporations would think twice about doing the same thing,
and people's lives could be saved.
HAVE YOU had contact with
the anti-globalization movement?
Champa: All of these movements
have come into existence because they are trying to save people's
lives. There is a natural solidarity between them. And if we
can all get together and take our message to the government and
get them to stop corporate globalization, we can easily save
people's lives. It's incredibly important.
Rashida: We are all on the
same platform now, and we have the same issues and the same concerns.
Whether it is about caste issues or about corporations, all of
us have to fight together. Politicians will do anything to save
their skins and their seats in parliament.
We need a movement. And Bhopal
happened because of globalization, and we don't want there to
be other Bhopals. When we went to Patancheru [another city in
India where corporate pollution is wrecking the environment],
we all resolved to fight together, that we would all work together
around the same issues. And we should get justice for them, too.
Their fish are also dead. Their animals are also dead.
We decided that we would all
fight together. And then the people from Patancheru came up to
Bhopal and we all spoke with one voice: "No more Bhopals!"
These organizations are growing. They are truly global organizations
to oppose what our governments are doing all over the world.
Look at what George Bush is doing to Iraq. We all have to fight
that as well. We have to get together and defend Iraq. This shouldn't
happen anywhere else in the world. No more innocent people should
have to suffer or die.
What they are doing--these
corporations and George Bush and others--is they are bringing
all of us together. We are truly confident that we will all get
together in the same movement, in the same organization, and
fight together. It's so interesting because we feel these things,
but it's really quite amazing to see our children also thinking
the same things.
WHAT DO you call on people
in the U.S. to do?
Rashida: Americans are so close
to Dow Chemical. It's an American company. The managers are all
Americans and live in America. Their shareholders are Americans.
The opportunities that you have in America to challenge these
people are opportunities that we do not have in India.
Everywhere there is a meeting
of Dow Chemical and its shareholders, or everywhere Dow wants
to open up a factory, you can go there and say, "No, first
you have to take responsibility for the disaster in Bhopal, and
then you can have your meeting." You have to make them talk
about Bhopal first and how they abandoned Bhopal after ruining
it.
You can confront Anderson and
tell him that he has to go back to India--that he has to tell
the world what he has done and what punishment he deserves for
it. And if the American people get together, it won't be all
that difficult to send Warren Anderson to India.
Champa: We have been raising
our voices in India for a long time. In fact, we had been screaming
for 18 years and nothing happened. But in the last two years,
when people from America began screaming as well, it made an
enormous difference. We have been able to involve so many more
people in the struggle this way.
DO YOU also have demands
of the Indian government, such as on the issue of health care?
Rashida: First of all, the
company has to admit that it was wrong, and it has to tell us
how to treat people who have been exposed to these gases. They
still haven't told us. Our Indian government should force them
to tell us what the cure is. They poisoned us and still won't
tell us what the antidote is.
Secondly, the Indian government
should take full responsibility for the health care and treatment
of the victims. And if they can't afford it, then they should
press the company to get it for us. Our Indian government should
be fighting the company the same way we are. It should be saying,
"You injured our people. You are responsible. You should
treat them. You should provide jobs. You should clean the environment."
But to tell you the truth,
we don't really expect the Indian government to be of any help
to us. They have already cut their deals with the corporations.
Our government has sold out to the corporations. The courts have,
too. None of them are with us.
But still we tell them that
if you hope to live your lives with any kind of self-respect,
you have to give justice to Bhopal. If Bhopal gets justice, you
may be able to live with yourselves. Or else the world will one
day point at you and say, "This is India. A nation where
8,000 people were killed in a single day and the company responsible
was allowed to flee. A nation that has been powerless so far
to bring them to justice."
That's why the Indian government
should care and help us get the justice we deserve. In my family,
seven people died because of the gas. In every family, there
are the same problems, the same illnesses, the chain of death
continues today. There are 30 to 32 deaths a month because of
gas-related illnesses. And neither will the company take responsibility,
nor will the government take responsibility, nor are we getting
justice in the courts. No one does anything to stop the contamination.
Despite all of these hurdles,
people are continuing to struggle, and the biggest consequence
of this struggle has been the changes that it produced in the
women--the women and the children.
Ever since we began our campaign
against Dow Chemical, our Jhadoo Maro campaign, we have been
speaking all over the world to try to prevent other Bhopals from
happening and to get justice for Bhopal. Because we don't think
it's just a question of Bhopal, but a question of the future
of the whole world.
So if Bhopal gets justice,
then it will also mean that we can begin to do things to save
the world. Because Bhopal is a lesson, and if we are unable to
learn from this lesson, then there is no saving the world. If
after seeing the consequences of Bhopal we learn nothing--if
we set these companies loose on the world and do not affix any
legal responsibility to them--then anything can happen.
If you find a Dow Chemical
company anywhere near you, you should force them to answer the
following questions about Bhopal: What have you done for Bhopal?
What justice have you brought for Bhopal? If you are going to
set up a factory here, then what kinds of chemicals are you using
in that factory?
To get the answers to these
questions--to get real justice for Bhopal--we will all have to
fight together, from all parts of the world, as one movement.
That is the only way we will be able to save the world and prevent
more Bhopals from happening.
Snehal Shingavi writes for the Socialist
Worker.
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