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Bhopal disaster: 30 years on, Indian advocates still seeking justice for gas leak victims
ABC Radio Australia - December 2, 2014
Activist Satinath Sarangi arrived in Bhopal the day after the leak and witnessed people struggling to breathe, some choking, babies crying, and a community in shock.
"The two things I remember most from the immediate aftermath of the disaster was just the magnitude of it; the number of people we saw who were in terrible pain, and the helplessness," he told the ABC.
"But most of all that there were so many ordinary people were coming out to help the victims."
The lingering effects of the gas tragedy include high rates of cancer, physically deformed babies and respiratory problems.
Many activists left in the months after the disaster, but Mr Sarangai stayed on and established a charity to provide health care to victims. He said many people in Bhopal still needed help.
"The people are in far worse conditions, many people are like they were on morning of the disaster, at least 150,000 people living close to the factory are still battling chronic illnesses," he said.
Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty visited the city this week. "Bhopal is often talked about as a tragedy of 1984 – probably the biggest industrial tragedy of our time," he said.
"But the fact is that when you go there and you meet the women and you meet the children, you meet the families, you realise this is actually a disaster of today. The site needs to be cleaned up. The water is contaminated and the soil is contaminated."
Bhopal compensation not enough
US multinational Union Carbide paid $470 million in compensation to the victims in 1989. But activists said the money did not go very far. More than 90 per cent of victims received less than $500 each for the lifelong injuries they suffered.
They are now fighting for the company that bought Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, to pay $8 billion more in compensation. Mr Shetty said people also wanted justice.
"Thirty years later, people are still waiting for justice," he said. "As you know, only seven Indian officials, relatively low-level people from the Indian factory, were finally convicted after waiting 25 years. Not a single senior manager from the American company has been brought to book."
Warren Anderson, the chairman of Union Carbide at the time of the accident, died in the US last year after avoiding three decades of attempts to extradite him to India to face criminal charges. Mr Shetty said there were still others who needed to be held accountable.
"It wasn't just him; there was a whole chain of command and it is the case that, ultimately paying the compensation, the bills for cleaning up and corporate accountability that lies with Dow Chemical and Union Carbide, not just one individual," he said.
Mr Shetty and other activists want India's prime minister Narendra Modi to raise the issues of justice and further compensation with US president Barak Obama when he visits India in January.
"You can imagine that if this had happened the other way around, if a foreign company had done this in the United States and 20,000 American lives had been lost, there is no way in which the company could have got away after criminal, culpable charges of homicide have been charged," he said.
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