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RIGHTS: Fight for Justice in Bhopal Enters Third Decade

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 1 2004 (IPS) - Twenty years after the disastrous leak of tonnes of poisonous gas at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, Dow Chemical, which bought Union Carbide two years ago, is coming under growing pressure to clean up the still highly toxic site and reimburse affected families for their medical and other costs.

With a lawsuit against the firm and its former chief Warren Anderson pending in a federal court in New York, the biggest blow struck on this anniversary week of the disaster was an Amnesty International (AI) report, ‘Clouds of Injustice’, released Monday. It details the continuing damage inflicted on the health and well being of the survivors and their families and the environment around the site.

”Bhopal was the greatest human rights disaster arising from corporate negligence”, said AI Secretary General Irene Khan, who charged that both the leak and the companies’ failure to fully compensate its victims violated their basic rights, including the rights to life and to health.

The incident also highlighted the need for corporations to comply with global human rights standards, which should be fully enforceable regardless of the jurisdiction where abuses take place, according to Amnesty.

”Companies have elected jurisdictions where governments are not strong enough, willing or able enough to enforce regulations”, said Khan. ”The legal gap that allows this to happen must be closed so that a disaster like Bhopal is not repeated”.

The Bhopal disaster took place at midnight Dec. 2, 1984, when some 27 tonnes of highly toxic methyl isocynanate gas leaked out of the plant and into the shantytowns around it. While between 7,000 and 10,000 people died immediately, about 15,000 more perished as a result of their exposure in the days, weeks, months and years that followed, according to public-health experts.

More than 150,000 survivors, including children born to parents who survived the accident, suffer some form of chronic illness or damage caused by the exposure, including cancer, neurological problems, chaotic menstrual cycles and mental illness. More than 50,000 of the survivors are considered too sick to earn a living.

In addition, community water supplies for more than 20,000 people were found to be contaminated at the plant site with unsafe levels of mercury, carbon tetrachloride and other toxic chemicals.

In 1989, Union Carbide, which built the plant in 1969, settled a civil suit brought by the Indian government by agreeing to pay 270 million dollars as compensation to people exposed to the gas. The firm maintained the payment was made out of a sense of ”moral”, rather than ”legal” responsibility since the facility was operated by a separate Indian subsidiary, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), in which Union Carbide held just over one-half of the stock.

That settlement has so far provided an average of less than 500 dollars to each of about half a million victims. The same victims are slated to receive from the Indian government a second allotment of almost 500 dollars over the next year as a result of the accumulation of interest on the original payment.

Activists insist that amount does not begin to cover the actual medical and related costs incurred by victims over the past 20 years, let alone the loss of livelihoods and what the U.S. legal system refers to as ”pain and suffering” caused both by the loss of loved ones and by the burden of the illnesses that they have to suffer.

”It’s really a pittance”, said Rajan Sharma, the main attorney for the Bhopal survivors since 1999, in a teleconference call with journalists Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary.

”It comes to a little over 20 dollars a year, when the victims and survivors are spending a huge amount of money on health care and finding new livelihood options”. The original settlement, he added, was designed for just over 100,000 victims, but it is now being spread among over 500,000.

Moreover, the deal failed to cover either criminal or punitive damages. Those have been the subjects of a 15-year-old trial in India in which Union Carbide and, more recently, Dow, have refused to take part.

In 1999, a group of Bhopal survivors sued Union Carbide and Anderson, who in recent years has disappeared from public view, in U.S. federal court for damages and an injunction to clean up the plant site and its surroundings. While an appeals court upheld a trial-court ruling that dismissed the personal claims as being barred by the statute of limitations, the underlying suit for environmental remediation has continued.

”The legal struggle to hold Union Carbide accountable for its conduct in Bhopal continues”, Sharma said, noting that dismissals of the case by the trial judge have been overturned twice at the federal appeals court level and that Congress is considering a resolution demanding that the company clean up the site and provide additional assistance for the victims.

”It is unacceptable to allow an American company not only the opportunity to exploit international borders and legal jurisdictions but also the ability to evade civil and criminal liability for environmental pollution and abuses committed overseas”, said Representative Frank Pallone, one of the eight co-sponsors of the resolution pending in Congress.

In another action, a resolution filed by Boston Common Asset Management on behalf of a number of shareholders has been presented to Dow’s annual meeting for two years in a row.

The resolution, which calls for the company to provide a full accounting of possible liabilities it might face due to the disaster, was supported by two of the U.S.’ largest state pension funds in 2003 and has put additional pressure on Dow to come to terms, according to Lauren Compere of Boston Common.

”We have actually seen a subtle shift in the way that Dow Chemical has addressed this issue”, she said, noting the company had for two years posted a statement on its website asserting it had no outstanding liability for the disaster, but that it was pulled from the site after the shareholder group filed a complaint with the Security and Exchange Commission.

”Dow is feeling the pressure of public opinion”, she said in the teleconference. “The changing legal landscape (on corporate responsibility) means they will have to change their position and come to the table”.

”Union Carbide is clearly not off the hook”, added Rick Hind, legislative director of the Greenpeace Toxics Campaign. ”If this had happened in the United States, there’s no doubt that Dow Chemical would (be liable). ”The ‘polluter pays’ principle is really the wave of the future”.

To mark the 20th anniversary, students at more than 50 U.S. colleges and universities this week are holding protests, vigils and documentary screenings about Bhopal designed to press the company to settle. ”Dow-Carbide should expect these protests to continue and intensify”, said Ryan Bodanyi, national coordinator for Students for Bhopal.