cogitoergosum
2010-06-10 12:34:39 UTC
Bhopal Tragedy Court Verdict: Sid Harth
http://navanavonmilita.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/bhopal-tragedy-court-verdict-sid-harth/
http://navanavonmilita.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/bhopal-tragedy-court-verdict-sid-harth-2/
Obama hasn't learned lessons of BhopalForeign companies such as BP are
shown the big stick, but Washington offers a big shield for its
multinationals abroad
Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 June 2010 12.33 BST
Victims of the Bhopal gas disaster demonstrate outside court after
seven men were sentenced for their role. Photograph: Raj Patidar/
Reuters
While Barack Obama is lambasting BP for spreading muck in the Gulf of
Mexico, he should perhaps pencil in a date with the people of Bhopal
when he visits India later this year. While 11 men lost their lives on
BP's watch and the shrimps get coated with black stuff, the chemicals
that killed thousands of people in Bhopal in 1984 are still leaching
into the ground water a quarter of a century after a poisonous, milky-
white cloud settled over the city.
The compensation – some $470m – paid out by Union Carbide, the US
owner of the plant and now part of Dow Chemical, was just the cash it
received from its insurers to compensate the victims, a process that
took 17 years. But it's one rule for them and another for anybody
else.
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While foreign companies in the US are shown the big stick, Washington
offers a big shield for its multinationals abroad. In the case of
Bhopal, it was the US that blocked India's requests to extradite
Warren Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide who accepted
"moral responsibility" for the accident until a short spell in an
Indian jail changed his mind. This week saw just the prosecution of
local Indian managers – 26 years after the event.
That was then. Surely India, which says it is an emerging power that
wants to shape the world, would be able to stand up to the United
States today? And wouldn't a more moral president see that foreign
lives are as precious as American ones? Apparently not.
India's still playing a craven toady to a US that is ruthlessly
pursuing an agenda where commercial interests are put above the lives
of others. Delhi has stripped a flagship nuclear bill of a clause that
allowed companies to be sued for negligence in the event of a – God
forbid – accident.
It is bizarre to see a leader of the developing world offer up its
citizens' lives cheaply to secure investment from foreign companies
and governments. Under the civil liabilities for nuclear damage bill,
central to a deal with the controversial nuclear pact with the US,
costs for cleaning up a catastrophic failure would end up being paid
by the Indian taxpayer.
Sure, India is desperate for the nuclear deal – which will see it
become the only nonpermanent member of the UN security council to keep
its atomic weapons and trade in nuclear know-how. But at what price?
Today we know.
Washington made it clear it wanted India to set the bar low on
liability – so that shareholders of large US corporations would not be
forced to pay out for sloppy, deadly mistakes. So any future victims
in India would be left at the mercy of the country's justice system,
like those poor souls who lost lives, loved ones and their health and
were condemned to spending years lost in the courts with little to
show but false hope.
Delhi had argued that international suppliers would not be willing to
enter the Indian nuclear market without such a bill. But has Russia
been willing to do so. And Germany accepts no cap on nuclear
liability. In the US the nuclear lobby accepts a liability set at
$10bn.
In Bhopal, what happened in the years after was a bigger scandal than
the original accident. Although Delhi was cackhanded, the US bears
most of the blame. Unlike BP, Washington did not threaten US companies
for deaths in the past and is actively working to ensure they evade
responsibility in the future. Obama's administration has not learned
the lessons of history. It means we are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Comments in chronological order (Total 14 comments)
giagreer
10 Jun 2010, 12:38PM
This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be
deleted. TheGreatRonRafferty
10 Jun 2010, 12:40PM
Ah, yes, but American lives are valuable, and Indians, after all, live
in ... err ... erm ... somewhere else.
On the international front, in the big calls, Obama is hardly
different to Dubya.
Recommend? (10)
10 Jun 2010, 12:42PM
"do gooders" capitalism looks strangely the same as reactionary
capitalism.
The victims don't care about the sound good noises covering the
abuse,
they demand facts of change.
Too bad, the pelican in oil and the people in Bhopal have no vote
supporting lobby's.
Recommend? (2)
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While we are backdating laws why dont we get one on the books that
says its illegal to screw over the world economy and there will be a
levy on the banks that triggered the mess.
Now let me see, oh yes, that would be the American banks. A liability
of say 10 Trillion would be about right!
Recommend? (8)
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Washington are threatening BP because the accident happened in America
and because it deflects the media glare from Halliburton.
It's blatant a case of propaganda for the vested interests - American
companies and America dollars.
Amereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeca, Amereeeeeeeeeeeca
Spread your golden wings
Recommend? (4)
10 Jun 2010, 12:45PM
What, you mean, surely not, American policy, hypocritcal.....never....
Recommend? (4)
10 Jun 2010, 12:47PM
India's still playing a craven toady to a US that is ruthlessly
pursuing an agenda where commercial interests are put above the lives
of others.
http://www.coppworks.com/articles/RnIceTakeda156.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Devi#CIA_Mission
Never mind the lost US nuclear reactor on the Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot
mountains. This disaster in waiting should be subject to full
disclosure and grovelling apologies and damages from the CIA
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:52PM
sneekyboy
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While we are backdating laws why dont we get one on the books that
says its illegal to screw over the world economy and there will be a
levy on the banks that triggered the mess.
Now let me see, oh yes, that would be the American banks. A liability
of say 10 Trillion would be about right!
Excellent suggestion Sneekyboy, I hadn't thought about that.
So, our government should be looking for all the billions we have
flushed down the toilet supporting our banks supporting their's so to
speak.
I'm sure CallMeDave will be on the phone post haste. On second
thoughts, CallMeDave is having so much fun at the moment screwing over
the entire British population, and especially the LibDems, that I
think it's not likely he'll do anything other than suck up to Obama.
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:53PM
Cherche les multinations behind the countries - not the other way
about.
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
Obama? Hypocrisy?
Yes he can!
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
#Bhopal. All together now. Let us start the trend on twitter.
Recommend? (2)
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
America and Obama are starting to show they aren't actually any ones
friends. Their own vested interests always come first - and if that
means destroying British pensions to make certain Halliburton and
Chaney are never reported in the US media then it's fine by them.
Basically, no change in US foreign policy.
Recommend? (1)
10 Jun 2010, 12:57PM
This is all too much for me. Not only do I find myself nodding in
agreement with Norman Tebbit and Boris Johnston, I am also finding
myself defending a major oil company.
I demand that this colony is retaken forthwith and a thousand natives
horsewhipped daily as compensation for my cognitive disonance.
10 Jun 2010, 1:00PM
BP at December 2009, 40 per cent of BP’s shares were owned in Britain,
but 39 per cent were owned in the US.
It has six British directors and six American, and employs 22,000
Americans against 10,000 Britons.
Obviously it's 100%, Therig was owned by an American company and it
was regulated by America.
Obviously, the fault of Britain and America is completely faultless.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/10/obama-lessons-bhopal-bp
India re-opens Bhopal investigation
By India correspondent Nidhi Dutt
Updated Thu Jun 10, 2010 7:53am AEST
A 10-member panel has been asked to make recommendations relating to
the relief and rehabilitation of victims. (ABC: ABC News)
Video: Anger over Bhopal gas disaster verdict (ABC News) Video: Seven
jailed over Bhopal disaster (7pm TV News NSW) Audio: Bhopal victims
angered at sentences for Union Carbide managers (The World Today)
Related Story: Eight convicted over Bhopal gas disaster The Indian
government has moved to re-open its investigation into the 1984 Bhopal
gas tragedy.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union
Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984,
instantly killing thousands of people in the world's worst industrial
catastrophe.
India's home minister, P Chidambaram, will head a group of ministers
panel to investigate the tragedy.
The government says it will look at all issues relating to the Bhopal
leak.
The 10-member panel has been asked to make recommendations relating to
the relief and rehabilitation of victims.
Earlier this week seven Indian employees of American chemical firm
Union Carbide were sentenced to two years imprisonment each.
The company's American chairman at the time, Warren Anderson, fled
India soon after the accident and has since avoided extradition.
Tags: disasters-and-accidents, accidents, workplace-accidents,
government-and-politics, world-politics, law-crime-and-justice, courts-
and-trials, india
First posted Thu Jun 10, 2010 7:30am AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/10/2923181.htm?section=justin
Columnists Where 1984 doesn’t end By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 10 Jun, 2010 An Indian boy has a poster hanging on his
neck that reads, “Bhopal gas disaster ... shame” as he walks with
activists of Socialist Unity Center of India, at a rally demanding
more rehabilitation of the affected and re-opening of the Bhopal case
in Calcutta, India, Wednesday, June 9, 2010. A court Monday convicted
seven former senior employees of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary of
“death by negligence” for their roles in the 1984 leak of toxic gas
that killed an estimated 15,000 people in the world's worst industrial
disaster. – AP Photo It was 1984 when the Bhopal gas disaster came as
a triple whammy for India, a variant of an Orwellian nightmare that
continues to relentlessly unfold albeit on the wrong side of the
ideological fence.
The world’s largest democracy had barely absorbed the enormity of
Indira Gandhi’s assassination on the last day of October when the
following morning officially ignited mob violence found ruling
Congress party supporters, abetted by the police, lynching thousands
of Sikhs across the country, mainly in Delhi as ‘revenge’.
Then on the night of Dec 2-3, right in the middle of a communally
polarised election campaign that would produce a never-to-be-repeated
four-fifths majority for Congress, lethal quantities of toxic methyl
isocynate leaked from a pesticide plant of the Union Carbide Company’s
Indian subsidiary. Twenty thousand were exterminated in what has come
to be known as the world’s worst industrial disaster.
This is where the triple tragedy parted ways. Mrs Gandhi’s killers
were handed prompt retribution. One was gunned down by her security
men during the assassination bid, another was hanged after a four-year
trial along with a third man, also a Sikh.
He was convicted in more or less the same way as Kashmiri death row
resident Afzal Guru, whose sentence was confirmed by the country’s
highest court — to assuage the collective conscience of society. Some
opposition politicians and newspaper editors called Kehar Singh’s
hanging a judicial murder.
The mass killings of Sikhs and the slow annihilation of 20,000 people
and the maiming and blinding of tens of thousands by the acts of
commission or omission of an American firm were expectedly, as part of
a pattern, put on the political back burner though not without
complicit judicial subterfuge.
Unequal and selective justice, however, didn’t go unnoticed. In 2004,
on the 20th anniversary of Mrs Gandhi’s death and the massacre of his
fellow Sikhs, writer Khushwant Singh put it bluntly “Four years (after
her death), Mrs Gandhi’s assassins Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh paid
the penalty for their crime by being hanged to death in Tihar jail.
“Twenty years later, the killers of 10,000 Sikhs remain unpunished.
The conclusion is clear: in secular India there is one law for the
Hindu majority, another for Muslims, Christians and Sikhs who are in
minority.”
Khushwant Singh forgot to include the poor as the most defining
category of Indians that continues to be denied the crumbs of justice.
Most of those who were affected by the Bhopal gas tragedy were poor
people who lived in slums around the Union Carbide plant.
The high court verdict on Monday clearly reflected that bias. All
seven convicted in the nightmarish industrial catastrophe were
sentenced to a mere two years in jail and a paltry fine of Rs100,000
each. They were given instant bail for a surety of Rs25,000 each. The
Union Carbide’s subsidiary in India was found guilty and fined all of
Rs5,00,000.
The beneficiaries of the judgment’s largesse included Keshub Mahindra,
the former chairman of the Union Carbide India Ltd, a unit of the US-
based Union Carbide Corporation, and current chairman of Mahindra &
Mahindra Company.
Outraged activists declared the verdict as of a piece with India’s
march towards becoming a banana republic. After waiting for more than
25 years the court found the men guilty of death by negligence, a
charge that carries a maximum two-year sentence. Audrey Gaughran,
director of global issues at Amnesty International had this to say:
“These are historic convictions, but it is too little, too late.”
More than 25 years after the disaster, the site had not been cleaned
up, the leak and its impact had not been properly investigated, more
than 100,000 people continued to suffer from health problems without
the medical care they needed, and survivors were still awaiting fair
compensation and full redress for their suffering.
US-based UCC and its former chairman, Warren Anderson, were charged in
1987. However, both have refused to face trial.
Naturally, Bhopal survivors are blaming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
for their continued misery. He handles the federal investigating
agency. They say the agency’s inability to pursue a professional
prosecution was responsible for their plight. Worse, they worry that
Monday’s verdict could set the benchmark for an arriving legislation
to handle any nuclear disaster as India gears up to usher in foreign
investors in its newly opened nuclear energy sector.
A feature of a banana republic is a collusionary ruling elite whose
interests lie in big finance abroad. In that sense India is ripe to
adorn the mantle that was once the preserve of Latin American
dictatorships. True to form, even in the case of the Bhopal tragedy,
it was the high-profile lawyer and former ambassador to Washington
Nani Palkhivala, cynosure of India’s middle classes, who single-
handedly helped the Union Carbide subvert justice.
Once credited with valiantly fighting Indira Gandhi, this lawyer
shamelessly filed a damaging affidavit in the southern district court
of New York in December 1985. He supported the defendant, the US-based
Union Carbide’s motion for dismissal of the case in the US court on
grounds of forum non conveniens. Palkhivala told Judge John F. Keenan
that “there is no doubt that the Indian judicial system can fairly and
satisfactorily handle the Bhopal litigation”.
Monday’s verdict has put a question mark on this and similar middle-
class icons. However, the political circus continues over not only the
issue of Bhopal, but the larger question of equal justice for the poor
and for a transparent regime to invite foreign capital, particularly
in the field of nuclear power.
It is curious that while the Indian prime minister looks for ways to
lower the hurdles for foreign investors to enable them to escape any
liability should their projects cause a human catastrophe like Bhopal,
US President Barack Obama, the Indian prime minister’s inspiration, is
rowing in the opposite direction.
“As far as I’m concerned, BP (British Petroleum) is responsible for
this horrific disaster, and we will hold them fully accountable on
behalf of the United States as well as the people and communities
victimised by this tragedy,” he proclaimed as his country faced the
worst environmental disaster from an unremitting oil slick. “We will
demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done
and the painful losses that they’ve caused.”
Here’s a chance for India to emulate a laudable ideal, one that could
save it from the ruinous path of being declared a banana republic by
its own suffering people.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
***@gmail.com
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/21-jawed-naqvi-where-1984-doesnt-seem-to-end-060-sk-05
Human Face
A verdict 25 years after Bhopal tragedy
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:31:00 06/10/2010
Filed Under: Disasters (general), Industrial accident, Punishment,
Crime and Law and Justice
In this decade of disasters, both natural and man-made, it behooves us
to remember the 1984 Bhopal tragedy in India which killed more than
20,000 people and whose aftereffects continue to destroy the health of
thousands. In terms of human lives lost, it is considered the world’s
deadliest industrial catastrophe, and it could have been prevented. It
was one of the worst ecological disasters in history, rivaling
Chernobyl in Russia.
Now, 25 years after that lethal gas leak, an Indian court has
sentenced seven former top managers of the US-owned Union Carbide
pesticide factory to two years in prison. According to an Agence
France Presse report, the company executives were originally charged
with culpable homicide but, to the outrage of survivors and victims,
the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence
with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
There is little to rejoice over in this verdict.
The Bhopal local government had also charged Union Carbide’s CEO
Warren Anderson with manslaughter and, if convicted, he could serve 10
years in prison. Warren evaded international arrest and a summons to
appear before a US court. Extradition moves were unsuccessful. In Aug.
2002, Greenpeace found Warren living a life of luxury in the Hamptons.
He was not included in the recent verdict because he was considered an
absconder.
Many of the youth of today and the future might not know about Bhopal
because the tragedy is not likely going to make it to the textbooks.
Does it not qualify as a historical entry like the 79 A.D. Mt.
Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii? Will our own 1991 Ormoc
mudslide that killed thousands in a blink of an eye make it to our
error-ridden textbooks (which are a huge disaster in themselves)? And
didn’t we see a likeness of Ormoc in last year’s “Ondoy” and “Pepeng”
disasters? And not to forget the Marcopper mine disaster that poisoned
the province of Marinduque.
I wrote about Bhopal years ago. Here’s a flashback. On the night of
Dec. 2 and early morning of Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide plant began
leaking some 27 tons of methyl isocynate (MIC), a deadly gas.
According to The Bhopal Medical Appeal and Sambhavna Trust that
espouses the cause of victims, none of the six safety systems designed
to contain that kind of a leak was operational and soon the gas began
to spread throughout the city.
An estimated half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000
have so far died as a result of this. More than 120,000 continue to
suffer ailments such as blindness, breathing problems, and
reproductive disorders.
In 1999, Greenpeace reported that chemicals causing cancer, brain
damage and brain defects were found in the water at the accident site.
These were in extremely high levels, that is, several million times
higher. Trichloroethene, known to impair fetal development, was found
at levels 50 times more than the accepted safe limits.
A 2002 testing report revealed that poisons such as 1, 3, 5
trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury were
present in the breast milk of nursing women.
At that time Michigan-based Dow Chemical which purchased Union Carbide
and acquired its assets in 2001 was said to have steadfastly refused
to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the
victims or disclose the composition of the gas leak which doctors need
to know in order to treat the victims. It was supposed to be a “trade
secret.”
Union Carbide had stuck to the figure of 3,800 victims. But according
to reports, “municipal workers who picked up bodies with their own
hands, loading them onto trucks for burial in mass graves or to be
burned on mass pyres, reckon they shifted at least 15,000 bodies.
Survivors, basing their estimates on the number of shrouds sold in the
city, conservatively claim about 8,000 died in the first week. Such
body counts become meaningless when you know that the dying has never
stopped.”
The Bhopal Union Carbide pesticide factory seemed problematic since
the time it was built in the 1970s. India seemed, at first, a huge
market for pest control products. It did not turn out that way. The
poor farmers, who constantly battled with droughts and floods, could
not afford them. The plant never reached its full capacity and ceased
active production in the early 1980s.
As reports went, a great quantity of chemicals remained there while
the plant’s safety system was allowed to deteriorate. Management
thought that since the plant had ceased production, there was no
threat. They were wrong.
Here was how it started: “Regular maintenance had fallen into such
disrepair that on the night of Dec. 2, when an employee was flushing a
corroded pipe, multiple stopcocks failed and allowed water to flow
freely into the largest tack of MIC. Exposure to this water soon led
to an uncontrolled reaction; the tank was blown out of its concrete
sarcophagus and spewed a deadly cloud of MIC, hydrogen cyanide, mono
methyl amine and other chemicals that hugged the ground. Blown by the
prevailing winds, this cloud settled over much of Bhopal. Soon,
thereafter, people began to die.”
In 1989, Union Carbide, in a partial settlement with the Indian
government, paid some $470 million in compensation. The victims were
not part of the negotiations and many felt cheated by the $300 to $500
each received. It could not cover many years’ of medical treatment.
About 50,000 injured Bhopalis could no longer return to work or move
freely about. Many have no one to look after them because their next
of kin had all died.
Bhopal should never happen again.
Send feedback to ***@gmail.com or www.ceresdoyo.com
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100610-274837/A-verdict-25-years-after-Bhopal-tragedy
...and I am Sid Harth
http://navanavonmilita.wordpress.com/2010/06/07/bhopal-tragedy-court-verdict-sid-harth/
http://navanavonmilita.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/bhopal-tragedy-court-verdict-sid-harth-2/
Obama hasn't learned lessons of BhopalForeign companies such as BP are
shown the big stick, but Washington offers a big shield for its
multinationals abroad
Randeep Ramesh guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 June 2010 12.33 BST
Victims of the Bhopal gas disaster demonstrate outside court after
seven men were sentenced for their role. Photograph: Raj Patidar/
Reuters
While Barack Obama is lambasting BP for spreading muck in the Gulf of
Mexico, he should perhaps pencil in a date with the people of Bhopal
when he visits India later this year. While 11 men lost their lives on
BP's watch and the shrimps get coated with black stuff, the chemicals
that killed thousands of people in Bhopal in 1984 are still leaching
into the ground water a quarter of a century after a poisonous, milky-
white cloud settled over the city.
The compensation – some $470m – paid out by Union Carbide, the US
owner of the plant and now part of Dow Chemical, was just the cash it
received from its insurers to compensate the victims, a process that
took 17 years. But it's one rule for them and another for anybody
else.
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While foreign companies in the US are shown the big stick, Washington
offers a big shield for its multinationals abroad. In the case of
Bhopal, it was the US that blocked India's requests to extradite
Warren Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide who accepted
"moral responsibility" for the accident until a short spell in an
Indian jail changed his mind. This week saw just the prosecution of
local Indian managers – 26 years after the event.
That was then. Surely India, which says it is an emerging power that
wants to shape the world, would be able to stand up to the United
States today? And wouldn't a more moral president see that foreign
lives are as precious as American ones? Apparently not.
India's still playing a craven toady to a US that is ruthlessly
pursuing an agenda where commercial interests are put above the lives
of others. Delhi has stripped a flagship nuclear bill of a clause that
allowed companies to be sued for negligence in the event of a – God
forbid – accident.
It is bizarre to see a leader of the developing world offer up its
citizens' lives cheaply to secure investment from foreign companies
and governments. Under the civil liabilities for nuclear damage bill,
central to a deal with the controversial nuclear pact with the US,
costs for cleaning up a catastrophic failure would end up being paid
by the Indian taxpayer.
Sure, India is desperate for the nuclear deal – which will see it
become the only nonpermanent member of the UN security council to keep
its atomic weapons and trade in nuclear know-how. But at what price?
Today we know.
Washington made it clear it wanted India to set the bar low on
liability – so that shareholders of large US corporations would not be
forced to pay out for sloppy, deadly mistakes. So any future victims
in India would be left at the mercy of the country's justice system,
like those poor souls who lost lives, loved ones and their health and
were condemned to spending years lost in the courts with little to
show but false hope.
Delhi had argued that international suppliers would not be willing to
enter the Indian nuclear market without such a bill. But has Russia
been willing to do so. And Germany accepts no cap on nuclear
liability. In the US the nuclear lobby accepts a liability set at
$10bn.
In Bhopal, what happened in the years after was a bigger scandal than
the original accident. Although Delhi was cackhanded, the US bears
most of the blame. Unlike BP, Washington did not threaten US companies
for deaths in the past and is actively working to ensure they evade
responsibility in the future. Obama's administration has not learned
the lessons of history. It means we are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
Comments in chronological order (Total 14 comments)
giagreer
10 Jun 2010, 12:38PM
This comment has been removed by a moderator. Replies may also be
deleted. TheGreatRonRafferty
10 Jun 2010, 12:40PM
Ah, yes, but American lives are valuable, and Indians, after all, live
in ... err ... erm ... somewhere else.
On the international front, in the big calls, Obama is hardly
different to Dubya.
Recommend? (10)
10 Jun 2010, 12:42PM
"do gooders" capitalism looks strangely the same as reactionary
capitalism.
The victims don't care about the sound good noises covering the
abuse,
they demand facts of change.
Too bad, the pelican in oil and the people in Bhopal have no vote
supporting lobby's.
Recommend? (2)
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While we are backdating laws why dont we get one on the books that
says its illegal to screw over the world economy and there will be a
levy on the banks that triggered the mess.
Now let me see, oh yes, that would be the American banks. A liability
of say 10 Trillion would be about right!
Recommend? (8)
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Washington are threatening BP because the accident happened in America
and because it deflects the media glare from Halliburton.
It's blatant a case of propaganda for the vested interests - American
companies and America dollars.
Amereeeeeeeeeeeeeeeca, Amereeeeeeeeeeeca
Spread your golden wings
Recommend? (4)
10 Jun 2010, 12:45PM
What, you mean, surely not, American policy, hypocritcal.....never....
Recommend? (4)
10 Jun 2010, 12:47PM
India's still playing a craven toady to a US that is ruthlessly
pursuing an agenda where commercial interests are put above the lives
of others.
http://www.coppworks.com/articles/RnIceTakeda156.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanda_Devi#CIA_Mission
Never mind the lost US nuclear reactor on the Nanda Devi and Nanda Kot
mountains. This disaster in waiting should be subject to full
disclosure and grovelling apologies and damages from the CIA
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:52PM
sneekyboy
10 Jun 2010, 12:44PM
Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the
Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message,
the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the
liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.
While we are backdating laws why dont we get one on the books that
says its illegal to screw over the world economy and there will be a
levy on the banks that triggered the mess.
Now let me see, oh yes, that would be the American banks. A liability
of say 10 Trillion would be about right!
Excellent suggestion Sneekyboy, I hadn't thought about that.
So, our government should be looking for all the billions we have
flushed down the toilet supporting our banks supporting their's so to
speak.
I'm sure CallMeDave will be on the phone post haste. On second
thoughts, CallMeDave is having so much fun at the moment screwing over
the entire British population, and especially the LibDems, that I
think it's not likely he'll do anything other than suck up to Obama.
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:53PM
Cherche les multinations behind the countries - not the other way
about.
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
Obama? Hypocrisy?
Yes he can!
Recommend? (3)
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
#Bhopal. All together now. Let us start the trend on twitter.
Recommend? (2)
10 Jun 2010, 12:54PM
America and Obama are starting to show they aren't actually any ones
friends. Their own vested interests always come first - and if that
means destroying British pensions to make certain Halliburton and
Chaney are never reported in the US media then it's fine by them.
Basically, no change in US foreign policy.
Recommend? (1)
10 Jun 2010, 12:57PM
This is all too much for me. Not only do I find myself nodding in
agreement with Norman Tebbit and Boris Johnston, I am also finding
myself defending a major oil company.
I demand that this colony is retaken forthwith and a thousand natives
horsewhipped daily as compensation for my cognitive disonance.
10 Jun 2010, 1:00PM
BP at December 2009, 40 per cent of BP’s shares were owned in Britain,
but 39 per cent were owned in the US.
It has six British directors and six American, and employs 22,000
Americans against 10,000 Britons.
Obviously it's 100%, Therig was owned by an American company and it
was regulated by America.
Obviously, the fault of Britain and America is completely faultless.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/10/obama-lessons-bhopal-bp
India re-opens Bhopal investigation
By India correspondent Nidhi Dutt
Updated Thu Jun 10, 2010 7:53am AEST
A 10-member panel has been asked to make recommendations relating to
the relief and rehabilitation of victims. (ABC: ABC News)
Video: Anger over Bhopal gas disaster verdict (ABC News) Video: Seven
jailed over Bhopal disaster (7pm TV News NSW) Audio: Bhopal victims
angered at sentences for Union Carbide managers (The World Today)
Related Story: Eight convicted over Bhopal gas disaster The Indian
government has moved to re-open its investigation into the 1984 Bhopal
gas tragedy.
A lethal plume of gas escaped from a storage tank at the US-run Union
Carbide pesticide factory in the early hours of December 3, 1984,
instantly killing thousands of people in the world's worst industrial
catastrophe.
India's home minister, P Chidambaram, will head a group of ministers
panel to investigate the tragedy.
The government says it will look at all issues relating to the Bhopal
leak.
The 10-member panel has been asked to make recommendations relating to
the relief and rehabilitation of victims.
Earlier this week seven Indian employees of American chemical firm
Union Carbide were sentenced to two years imprisonment each.
The company's American chairman at the time, Warren Anderson, fled
India soon after the accident and has since avoided extradition.
Tags: disasters-and-accidents, accidents, workplace-accidents,
government-and-politics, world-politics, law-crime-and-justice, courts-
and-trials, india
First posted Thu Jun 10, 2010 7:30am AEST
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/10/2923181.htm?section=justin
Columnists Where 1984 doesn’t end By Jawed Naqvi
Thursday, 10 Jun, 2010 An Indian boy has a poster hanging on his
neck that reads, “Bhopal gas disaster ... shame” as he walks with
activists of Socialist Unity Center of India, at a rally demanding
more rehabilitation of the affected and re-opening of the Bhopal case
in Calcutta, India, Wednesday, June 9, 2010. A court Monday convicted
seven former senior employees of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary of
“death by negligence” for their roles in the 1984 leak of toxic gas
that killed an estimated 15,000 people in the world's worst industrial
disaster. – AP Photo It was 1984 when the Bhopal gas disaster came as
a triple whammy for India, a variant of an Orwellian nightmare that
continues to relentlessly unfold albeit on the wrong side of the
ideological fence.
The world’s largest democracy had barely absorbed the enormity of
Indira Gandhi’s assassination on the last day of October when the
following morning officially ignited mob violence found ruling
Congress party supporters, abetted by the police, lynching thousands
of Sikhs across the country, mainly in Delhi as ‘revenge’.
Then on the night of Dec 2-3, right in the middle of a communally
polarised election campaign that would produce a never-to-be-repeated
four-fifths majority for Congress, lethal quantities of toxic methyl
isocynate leaked from a pesticide plant of the Union Carbide Company’s
Indian subsidiary. Twenty thousand were exterminated in what has come
to be known as the world’s worst industrial disaster.
This is where the triple tragedy parted ways. Mrs Gandhi’s killers
were handed prompt retribution. One was gunned down by her security
men during the assassination bid, another was hanged after a four-year
trial along with a third man, also a Sikh.
He was convicted in more or less the same way as Kashmiri death row
resident Afzal Guru, whose sentence was confirmed by the country’s
highest court — to assuage the collective conscience of society. Some
opposition politicians and newspaper editors called Kehar Singh’s
hanging a judicial murder.
The mass killings of Sikhs and the slow annihilation of 20,000 people
and the maiming and blinding of tens of thousands by the acts of
commission or omission of an American firm were expectedly, as part of
a pattern, put on the political back burner though not without
complicit judicial subterfuge.
Unequal and selective justice, however, didn’t go unnoticed. In 2004,
on the 20th anniversary of Mrs Gandhi’s death and the massacre of his
fellow Sikhs, writer Khushwant Singh put it bluntly “Four years (after
her death), Mrs Gandhi’s assassins Satwant Singh and Kehar Singh paid
the penalty for their crime by being hanged to death in Tihar jail.
“Twenty years later, the killers of 10,000 Sikhs remain unpunished.
The conclusion is clear: in secular India there is one law for the
Hindu majority, another for Muslims, Christians and Sikhs who are in
minority.”
Khushwant Singh forgot to include the poor as the most defining
category of Indians that continues to be denied the crumbs of justice.
Most of those who were affected by the Bhopal gas tragedy were poor
people who lived in slums around the Union Carbide plant.
The high court verdict on Monday clearly reflected that bias. All
seven convicted in the nightmarish industrial catastrophe were
sentenced to a mere two years in jail and a paltry fine of Rs100,000
each. They were given instant bail for a surety of Rs25,000 each. The
Union Carbide’s subsidiary in India was found guilty and fined all of
Rs5,00,000.
The beneficiaries of the judgment’s largesse included Keshub Mahindra,
the former chairman of the Union Carbide India Ltd, a unit of the US-
based Union Carbide Corporation, and current chairman of Mahindra &
Mahindra Company.
Outraged activists declared the verdict as of a piece with India’s
march towards becoming a banana republic. After waiting for more than
25 years the court found the men guilty of death by negligence, a
charge that carries a maximum two-year sentence. Audrey Gaughran,
director of global issues at Amnesty International had this to say:
“These are historic convictions, but it is too little, too late.”
More than 25 years after the disaster, the site had not been cleaned
up, the leak and its impact had not been properly investigated, more
than 100,000 people continued to suffer from health problems without
the medical care they needed, and survivors were still awaiting fair
compensation and full redress for their suffering.
US-based UCC and its former chairman, Warren Anderson, were charged in
1987. However, both have refused to face trial.
Naturally, Bhopal survivors are blaming Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
for their continued misery. He handles the federal investigating
agency. They say the agency’s inability to pursue a professional
prosecution was responsible for their plight. Worse, they worry that
Monday’s verdict could set the benchmark for an arriving legislation
to handle any nuclear disaster as India gears up to usher in foreign
investors in its newly opened nuclear energy sector.
A feature of a banana republic is a collusionary ruling elite whose
interests lie in big finance abroad. In that sense India is ripe to
adorn the mantle that was once the preserve of Latin American
dictatorships. True to form, even in the case of the Bhopal tragedy,
it was the high-profile lawyer and former ambassador to Washington
Nani Palkhivala, cynosure of India’s middle classes, who single-
handedly helped the Union Carbide subvert justice.
Once credited with valiantly fighting Indira Gandhi, this lawyer
shamelessly filed a damaging affidavit in the southern district court
of New York in December 1985. He supported the defendant, the US-based
Union Carbide’s motion for dismissal of the case in the US court on
grounds of forum non conveniens. Palkhivala told Judge John F. Keenan
that “there is no doubt that the Indian judicial system can fairly and
satisfactorily handle the Bhopal litigation”.
Monday’s verdict has put a question mark on this and similar middle-
class icons. However, the political circus continues over not only the
issue of Bhopal, but the larger question of equal justice for the poor
and for a transparent regime to invite foreign capital, particularly
in the field of nuclear power.
It is curious that while the Indian prime minister looks for ways to
lower the hurdles for foreign investors to enable them to escape any
liability should their projects cause a human catastrophe like Bhopal,
US President Barack Obama, the Indian prime minister’s inspiration, is
rowing in the opposite direction.
“As far as I’m concerned, BP (British Petroleum) is responsible for
this horrific disaster, and we will hold them fully accountable on
behalf of the United States as well as the people and communities
victimised by this tragedy,” he proclaimed as his country faced the
worst environmental disaster from an unremitting oil slick. “We will
demand that they pay every dime they owe for the damage they’ve done
and the painful losses that they’ve caused.”
Here’s a chance for India to emulate a laudable ideal, one that could
save it from the ruinous path of being declared a banana republic by
its own suffering people.
The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.
***@gmail.com
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/21-jawed-naqvi-where-1984-doesnt-seem-to-end-060-sk-05
Human Face
A verdict 25 years after Bhopal tragedy
By Ma. Ceres P. Doyo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:31:00 06/10/2010
Filed Under: Disasters (general), Industrial accident, Punishment,
Crime and Law and Justice
In this decade of disasters, both natural and man-made, it behooves us
to remember the 1984 Bhopal tragedy in India which killed more than
20,000 people and whose aftereffects continue to destroy the health of
thousands. In terms of human lives lost, it is considered the world’s
deadliest industrial catastrophe, and it could have been prevented. It
was one of the worst ecological disasters in history, rivaling
Chernobyl in Russia.
Now, 25 years after that lethal gas leak, an Indian court has
sentenced seven former top managers of the US-owned Union Carbide
pesticide factory to two years in prison. According to an Agence
France Presse report, the company executives were originally charged
with culpable homicide but, to the outrage of survivors and victims,
the Supreme Court in 1996 reduced the charges to death by negligence
with maximum imprisonment of just two years.
There is little to rejoice over in this verdict.
The Bhopal local government had also charged Union Carbide’s CEO
Warren Anderson with manslaughter and, if convicted, he could serve 10
years in prison. Warren evaded international arrest and a summons to
appear before a US court. Extradition moves were unsuccessful. In Aug.
2002, Greenpeace found Warren living a life of luxury in the Hamptons.
He was not included in the recent verdict because he was considered an
absconder.
Many of the youth of today and the future might not know about Bhopal
because the tragedy is not likely going to make it to the textbooks.
Does it not qualify as a historical entry like the 79 A.D. Mt.
Vesuvius eruption that buried Pompeii? Will our own 1991 Ormoc
mudslide that killed thousands in a blink of an eye make it to our
error-ridden textbooks (which are a huge disaster in themselves)? And
didn’t we see a likeness of Ormoc in last year’s “Ondoy” and “Pepeng”
disasters? And not to forget the Marcopper mine disaster that poisoned
the province of Marinduque.
I wrote about Bhopal years ago. Here’s a flashback. On the night of
Dec. 2 and early morning of Dec. 3, 1984, a Union Carbide plant began
leaking some 27 tons of methyl isocynate (MIC), a deadly gas.
According to The Bhopal Medical Appeal and Sambhavna Trust that
espouses the cause of victims, none of the six safety systems designed
to contain that kind of a leak was operational and soon the gas began
to spread throughout the city.
An estimated half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000
have so far died as a result of this. More than 120,000 continue to
suffer ailments such as blindness, breathing problems, and
reproductive disorders.
In 1999, Greenpeace reported that chemicals causing cancer, brain
damage and brain defects were found in the water at the accident site.
These were in extremely high levels, that is, several million times
higher. Trichloroethene, known to impair fetal development, was found
at levels 50 times more than the accepted safe limits.
A 2002 testing report revealed that poisons such as 1, 3, 5
trichlorobenzene, dichloromethane, chloroform, lead and mercury were
present in the breast milk of nursing women.
At that time Michigan-based Dow Chemical which purchased Union Carbide
and acquired its assets in 2001 was said to have steadfastly refused
to clean up the site, provide safe drinking water, compensate the
victims or disclose the composition of the gas leak which doctors need
to know in order to treat the victims. It was supposed to be a “trade
secret.”
Union Carbide had stuck to the figure of 3,800 victims. But according
to reports, “municipal workers who picked up bodies with their own
hands, loading them onto trucks for burial in mass graves or to be
burned on mass pyres, reckon they shifted at least 15,000 bodies.
Survivors, basing their estimates on the number of shrouds sold in the
city, conservatively claim about 8,000 died in the first week. Such
body counts become meaningless when you know that the dying has never
stopped.”
The Bhopal Union Carbide pesticide factory seemed problematic since
the time it was built in the 1970s. India seemed, at first, a huge
market for pest control products. It did not turn out that way. The
poor farmers, who constantly battled with droughts and floods, could
not afford them. The plant never reached its full capacity and ceased
active production in the early 1980s.
As reports went, a great quantity of chemicals remained there while
the plant’s safety system was allowed to deteriorate. Management
thought that since the plant had ceased production, there was no
threat. They were wrong.
Here was how it started: “Regular maintenance had fallen into such
disrepair that on the night of Dec. 2, when an employee was flushing a
corroded pipe, multiple stopcocks failed and allowed water to flow
freely into the largest tack of MIC. Exposure to this water soon led
to an uncontrolled reaction; the tank was blown out of its concrete
sarcophagus and spewed a deadly cloud of MIC, hydrogen cyanide, mono
methyl amine and other chemicals that hugged the ground. Blown by the
prevailing winds, this cloud settled over much of Bhopal. Soon,
thereafter, people began to die.”
In 1989, Union Carbide, in a partial settlement with the Indian
government, paid some $470 million in compensation. The victims were
not part of the negotiations and many felt cheated by the $300 to $500
each received. It could not cover many years’ of medical treatment.
About 50,000 injured Bhopalis could no longer return to work or move
freely about. Many have no one to look after them because their next
of kin had all died.
Bhopal should never happen again.
Send feedback to ***@gmail.com or www.ceresdoyo.com
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20100610-274837/A-verdict-25-years-after-Bhopal-tragedy
...and I am Sid Harth