CAMBRIDGE PROTEST AGAINST 26 YEARS OF INJUSTICE TO BHOPAL GAS SURVIVORS

Cambridge joined a group of several U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, to voice a forceful condemnation of the recent verdict against 7 officials of Union Carbide India Limited responsible for the 1984 Bhopal Gas tragedy in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Having caused the death of 23,000 people and injury to 500,000, the accused got a very light sentence – $2000 in fines and a 2-year prison term for which they have already posted bail. “This is a travesty of justice,” said Garga Chatterjee, a PhD student at Harvard
Several organizations and students groups, including MIT Amnesty International, Association for India’s Development (AID) and Alliance for Secular and Democratic South Asia, joined hands with the organizers of the protest, the Boston Coalition for Justice in Bhopal. Volunteers from these organizations attracted the attention of a large crowd in Harvard square by handing out pamphlets, shouting slogans, getting petitions signed and displaying photos of maimed victims.

The world’s worst industrial disaster occurred the night of Decemeber 2nd, 1984 in one of the poorest sectors of Bhopal where a chemical plant was set up to produce pesticides. For 26 years the first, second, and now third generation of survivors have been fighting one of the richest corporations in the world, Union Carbide (fully owned by Dow Chemicals since 2001), that repeatedly refuses to clean up the toxic dump site of the factory. This toxic chemicals continue to contaminate the drinking ground water of at least 16 communities in the locality.

 â€œThe Indian government is sacrificing its poor people to pander to the interests of multinational corporations. The Bhopal survivors have been fighting their case with dignity: they walked 800 kilometers twice from Bhopal to Delhi to ask for a patient hearing,” explained Leonid Chindelevitch of the Boston Coalition for Justice in Bhopal.

The crowd raised slogans like, “Dow Dow, Clean up Now,” and “Justice for Bhopal is Justice for All”.

The government of India, in reaction to the widespread protest, hurriedly announced an increased compensation for the victims and a plan to clean up the toxic site. However, the compensation is only going to reach lesser than 10% of all the people affected by the disaster, and the clean-up is not going to be billed to Dow Chemicals according to the “polluter pays” principle, as demanded by the survivor organizations. “Whose money is being used here? Where is the guarantee that the corporation will own up the liability when it has refused to all along?” asked Saif Pathan of AID.

Dow Chemicals acquired Union Carbide in 2001, but refuses to own up the liability of this company in a foreign soil. The former CEO of Union Carbide, Mr.Warren Anderson, who currently lives in the Hamptons, is charged as an absconder of justice in India. The protesters also drew parallels between the BP clean-up of the oil spill and the refusal of a US corporation to clean up its mess in India.

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