The Bhopal Medical Appeal has places available in the British 10K London Run, on Sunday July 8th, and we are recruiting now! This will be the fourth year we have entered runners in to this event and we’ve seen it go from strength to strength. It is possible to get fit AND raise money for a good cause and, if you think it might be for you, then we have everything you need.
It’s a fantastic route, taking in many of the most famous sites in central London. It starts at Hyde Park Corner and goes through Trafalgar Square, along the Embankment and back past the London Eye and Houses of Parliament, then finishes on Whitehall. In fact it follows part of what will be the Olympic Marathon course and takes place just a couple of weeks prior to that.
We pay your entry fee, you get official chip timing and a personal race photograph, plus we give you a Bhopal Medical Appeal t-shirt to run in. After the run we treat everybody to a cold beer and curry picnic in Hyde Park- which has now become a very popular tradition with our runners! All we ask is that you raise £250 in sponsorship.
Please email us for more information at: info@bhopal.org
Click here for more information about the 10k run.
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
The Global Green Congress 2012 at Dakar, Senegal passed the Bhopal Resolution with unanimous vote on 1st April 2012. There was a 100% vote passed on the resolution.
Green party representatives from around the world came together to ensure justice for Bhopal under a ‘polluter pays’ principle. They further agreed to hold Union Carbide and its current owner Dow Chemical accountable for Bhopal related liabilities, as well as oppose any association with Dow until the site is remediated, non-toxic water supplies ensured and medical care for those still suffering provided.
The Bhopal Resolution is outlined below:
MEP604 – Justice for Bhopal
UKPP India
{Whilst this resolution is a new one, it emerged from the discussion related to the nuclear resolution amendment and has been accepted after the deadline on that basis.}
Resolution: Global Greens urge for Justice for Bhopal to ensure a disaster free world
The 1984 Bhopal Gas Disaster – The world’s worst industrial disaster – has valuable lessons for the world. The disaster happened on the intervening night of 2-3rd December 1984 when tonnes of toxic gases leaked out of a factory owned by an American Multinational Union Carbide Corporation. The gas leak killed more than 3,000 people and left another 120,000 chronically ill in the first few days, which has now substantially increased. The disaster itself is far from over. The compensation amount of $470 million, with $450 million levied from Union Carbide Corporation, was wholly inadequate. Shared by 600,000 victims, the compensation amounted roughly to $500 per victim for lifelong illness. Costs of environmental remediation, medical monitoring and rehabilitation, economic rehabilitation of the victims were not and have not been considered. While Dow Chemicals, current owner of Union Carbide refuses to accept any liability, the disaster continues in form of second generation effects, groundwater contamination, shoddy relief and rehabilitation measures, and an ever elusive justice.
We recognize that companies like Dow Chemicals have demonstrated disregard for all principles of environmentally sustainable practices, and equity and justice in several developing countries. Therefore, ensuring justice in Bhopal will resonate and strengthen the environmental justice and corporate accountability movements across the world.
We declare our support to the Bhopal survivors led movement for justice and corporate accountability and state our commitment to do all within our powers to ensure that a Bhopal like situation never happens again anywhere in the world. We strongly condemn any association with Dow Chemicals in wake of its Bhopal related liabilities. We urge International and National Olympics Committees to demonstrate their real commitment to environmental sustainability and peace by dissociating themselves from Dow. We strongly urge Indian and US government to act in the interest of victims by working together in upholding the rights of the victims, resolving all matters related to Bhopal liabilities and setting up a strong precedence for the internationally recognized “Polluter Pays” principle.
We want developmental policies to be drafted keeping in mind the rights of disaster victims, rather than the interests of the corporate perpetrators of such disasters.
In this context, Greens parties will work to:
1. Ensure justice for Bhopal and do all within our powers to make the polluter pay by holding Union Carbide and its current owner, Dow Chemicals, accountable for Bhopal related liabilities so that a strong precedence can be set for the future.
2. Oppose any association with Dow Chemicals until it agrees to correct the historical wrongs committed on the people of Bhopal by agreeing to pay – for cleaning up the site and local water supplies, for medical care for those still suffering as a result of the disaster, and for their continued disregard for both due legal process and the rights of Bhopal’s victims.
Tabled for vote with support from:
UKPP India
Australian Green party members
Green Civil society (Nepali Greens)
Civil Will Green Party of Mongolia
Nigeria Green Movement
Partido Kalikasan – Philippines (Philippines Green Party)
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
Eurig Scandrett is taking on a 45 mile sponsored cycle tour of central Scotland on the 28th April, for and on behalf of The Bhopal Medical Appeal. Eurig is Convenor of Scottish friends of Bhopal, a project of The Bhopal Medical Appeal.
“Amongst raising funds and awareness for The BMA, we aim to highlight that the issues Bhopal raises are not unique to this community alone. Bhopalis represents environmental injustice everywhere. All the places listed on the tour that Eurig is cycling to in Scotland have a history of resistance to pollution and by cycling between them, Eurig hopes to emphasise the connection between these communities and to highlight the common issue of how pollution from industry and its toxic emissions effect us all” says Ingrid Neil, also from Scottish friends of Bhopal.
The cycle takes place on 28th of April which is International Workers Memorial Day which commemorates all lives lost or injured in the workplace. Eurig is planning to cycle through Bathgate at 12.30 in order to join the West Lothian Workers Memorial Day event.
To sponsor Eurig please visit his JustGiving page here
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
Congratulations to Saurabh Jain and John Hurst who will be celebrating their civil partnership on the 9th June 2012. Saurabh and John are asking their friends and family for donations to the Bhopal Medical Appeal in lieu of gifts.
John spent a week volunteering at the Sambhavna clinic funded by the BMA in November 2010, and Saurabh regularly travels to Bhopal to operate and help train the local ophthalmology teams.
“Sambhavna is amazing. It is the best example of a patient-centred, community located, excellent and environmentally sustainable clinic we have ever seen. The clinic is devoted to looking after those affected by the 1984 disaster, or still being affected by the toxic waste that contaminates the local water. We’ve supported the charity for a while now, and we think they deserve that support. If you were thinking of spending money on us, please, think again. Sambhavna needs it more than we do” say the couple.
Warm thanks to the happy couple from all of us at the BMA.
To go to Saurabh and John’s JustGiving page click here
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
On Friday 30th activists supporting survivors of the 1984 gas disaster gathered in London to tell the London Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympics Games (LOCOG) to ‘Drop Dow Now.’
Activists staged a ‘die-in’ whereby they handed over 22,700 signatories from two petitions that have been running for several months. The Change.org petition has over 28,000 signatures from the UK, and the SumOfUs petition has over 36,000 from signatories all over the world.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) held a press conference with the LOCOG Chair Lord Coe and CEO Paul Deighton on the morning of Friday the 30th.
Activists believe that Dow is contaminating the London Olympics with its toxic sponsorship whilst trying to whitewash the reality of the continuing tragedy in Bhopal. They urge the IOC as well as LOCOG to ‘Drop Dow Now.’
The Dow sponsorship of the games continues to leave a controversial cloud hanging over the 2012 Olympic. When Dow purchased Union Carbide in 2001, outstanding civil and criminal liabilities from the disaster still existed. Union Carbide continues to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical.
Activists and survivors of say that 25,000 people have been killed in subsequent years since the disaster, and that thousands more are currently affected today. For an Olympic games that is priding itself for its’ ethical and sustainable stand, a sponsor of this kind is hugely inappropriate, say survivors and activists. Rights groups, athletes and Indian and British politicians have all similarly called for the company’s sponsorship to be terminated.
After Friday’s events, Lord Coe and others from LOCOG say they are willing to meet with activists to discuss their concerns. “The answer is yes. But actually it will be an ongoing exchange. We have been talking for some time but clearly the answer is yes,” said Coe on the matter of a proposed meeting with the protestors.
Tim Edwards, from of the Bhopal Medical Appeal, one of the ‘protestors’ Lord Coe refers to, has been writing to LOCOG since August 2011, trying to warn both of the plainly unsuitable nature of Dow Chemical and of the inevitable protests that would greet its sponsorship of Britain’s Olympics.
“Our letters draw attention to the ongoing water poisoning in Bhopal and the resulting spate of physical and mental disabilities that our clinics must treat but, sadly, this did not prevent LOCOG striking a separate deal for Dow Chemical to also sponsor Britain’s Paralympics” explained Tim.
He continues: “As we are yet to receive so much as a single reply to any of our letters, we very much look forward to hearing in person Lord Coe’s thoughts on the universal legal principles ‘polluter pays’ and ‘successor liability’ in the very near future.”
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
The annual sports day at the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre was held this year on the 21st and 22nd of March. The children at Chingari were organised in accordance with their disabilities and age, and were helped to participate in these events by resident sports coaches Tarique Ahmed and Azam Khan.
Different sports activities took place such as athletics, wheelchair races, skipping, football, basketball, crab walking, tricycle races and bocce (a game smilar to boules) Such sports events help in raising the moral of the children and also help to integrate them into mainstream society.
The children had a great time throughout the day, and the parents made the event successful with their help and cooperation. Many of the mothers provided voluntary help to the staff by assisting with various activities and also participating in a few games themselves.
At the end of the day all of the children were very happy to receive the prizes from managing trustees of Chingari, Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla. The sports coaches ensured that all of the children who regulalry come to Chingari participated in one way or another and received a prize.
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
Late in the night of 2 December 1984 poor safety measures led to the release of 27 tonnes of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas from a pesticide plant owned by Union Carbide India Limited in the city of Bhopal, India.
The abandoned factory still stands 27 years on
The poisonous gas went on to kill 25,000 people in the minutes, days, months and years following. Many more were injured and children there are often born with birth defects. The Union Carbide Corporation did their best to downplay their responsibility as much as they could in the aftermath and after a sketchy settlement process they were done with the matter.
When the Dow Chemical Company bought Union Carbide in 2001 they generously settled all outstanding claims against Carbide at home in the US and have consistently ignored claims from Bhopal. The story is back in the news as a result of the public outcry over Dow Chemical’s sponsorship of the 2012 London Olympics.
In this post I want to share an account of my visit to the abandoned Union Carbide factory site last month. I was four months old when the initial leak happened. I probably heard it mentioned a few times in school or pop culture, but only knew about as much about it as anyone knows about horrible things that happened a long time ago in a foreign country. The first time I really started to learn about it was after I heard about the culture jamming pranksters the Yes Men and saw this legendary 2003 hoax:
In 2007 when I was sent to Karnataka in South India as part of my internship through the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, I was trained in Calgary, Alberta with Prabjit Barn, another Shastri intern who was being sent to do research with the Sambhavna Clinic on the ongoing health impacts of the gas leak on people in the area. When we all got together again in Delhi at the end of the internship some of us met up with some of Prabjit’s friends from Bhopal who had marched to Delhi to demand more from their government. Many of the people I saw there were old women, including one octogenarian who apparently led the entire 700km march, walking faster than everyone else.
I learnt much more later on after I returned to university and took on a group assignment where each of us were to take on different stakeholders on the Bhopal gas leak tragedy. Despite all the depressing subjects I had studied up to then, I had never found myself feel so upset and moved by a research topic before. In the way they allowed for the disaster to happen and how they have managed it in the aftermath, Union Carbide and Dow Chemical have showed almost no respect for human life and no legal system has been able to bring them to account.
Slogan painted on the wall of the abandoned Union Carbide Factory
In his 2004 documentary Scared Sacred, Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper visits a number of the planet’s ground zeros as a sort of modern pilgrimage to make connections and search for hope. I wasn’t crazy about the film itself, but I appreciated how he decided to take a pilgrimage to Bhopal to pay his respects to these victims of the world’s worst industrial disaster. I decided that the next time I was in India, I would do the same.
Believe it or not, the market for serving Bhopal gas tragedy pilgrims is not a big one. Search any website or guidebook on visiting Bhopal and they will mention the lakes, temples and museums – but nothing on the single event that most people know the city for and how one can learn about it first-hand. Through emails with Prabjit back in Canada and connecting with some people at the local Baha’i Centre I figured out where the factory site was and a couple clinics to visit and people to meet.
The rusting hulk of the factory remains
From what I read during my research I was pretty sure that the factory site would be closed to the public since the factory site itself has yet to be cleaned up and is a major part of the ongoing controversy. To my surprise, my new friend Manoj and I were met at an entrance by three casually dressed men lying on cots who claimed to be in charge of letting people in. For 300 rupees (about $6) they would let us in and show us around. From looking at them I doubted they were in charge of anything. I asked who they work for – the city, state or central government? They said that they answer to the In charge, who was not around today. In charge is actually a very common job title in India which means exactly what it sounds like. Eventually one of the men brought me inside a building where their uniforms were hung on hooks on the wall and there was a pile of signed photocopies of passports and forms of other foreigners who went through the municipal corporation (think: city hall) to request access the legal (think: mind-numbingly bureaucratic) way, a three day process. Three hundred rupees it is!
First stop was an empty lab where Union Carbide scientists did their research. The floor was covered with broken glass from the windows and old lab containers. Under the counter we found several bottles of lab materials left untouched that none have dared to disturb.
Abandoned chemicals left strewn in the factory
While the plant has been abandoned, it hasn’t really been abandoned. As we walked along its lanes we crossed paths with women grazing their livestock and boys hanging out as they foraged for small fruit. I have now learned that the people who live near nearby know that these are dangerous activities, but they feel they have no choice. The pressure is worse when it comes to drinking the water that continues to poison them. Researchers have found high concentrations of chlorobenzenes, organochlorines, chromium, copper, nickel, lead, zinc and mercury in the local water and soil.
We made our way to a very tall structure of pipes, platforms and containers at the centre of the site. Our guide pointed out a tiny pipe near the top and said that it was the very pipe that the MIC gas escaped from that night in 1984.
Union Carbide left their mark on Bhopal
Across from this structure was a giant tank sitting on the ground that reminded me of beached whale. Not that I have ever seen a beached whale. Our guide said that this was the very pipe that held the MIC gas before it escaped. What happened was that some water leaked in past a number of shoddy safeguards, which caused a reaction with the MIC, dramatically raising the temperature and pressure inside the tank and leading to the leak. Our guide said that the government later pulled the tank out of the ground so that they could more easily show the world the tank that killed so many people. There are several other tanks throughout the plant which many suspect may not still hold MIC and other toxic materials.
Before we left we walked over a wide concrete surface that was growing over with weeds. Our guide explained that here there used to be a building there but it was torn down by an angry group of local people in the days after the disaster. They were enraged over what happened and decided to take it out on a number of buildings on the site.
Outside the plant Manoj and I crossed the street and walked over to a statue of a woman and a baby that I had seen pictures of years earlier online. Its plaque reads:
NO MORE HIROSHIMA
NO MORE BHOPAL
WE WANT TO LIVE
We decided to make our pilgrimage complete by reading a couple prayers for the departed, one in Hindi and one in English.
We also visited two amazing organizations that serve the victims of the disaster, Sambhavna Clinic and the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre. Sambhavna Clinic offers all types of health care to victims of the disaster as well as heath education and research work on the ongoing contamination of water and soil. Prabjit had a list of people for me to say hello to for her, including Chandrakanta a very good friend of hers who does cleaning at the clinic.
Children from the local area
At the Chingari Rehabilitation Centre we chatted with their new Public Relations Officer Tabish Ali. Chingari offers special education and other treatment for children who are born with severe learning disabilities as a result of the gas leak. He told us about their activities and showed us a great short film he had just made with the help of photographer Nicolas Ferras. The film is made entirely of digital photographs rather than actual video footage:
Please support The Bhopal Medical Appeal by staying in touch with us on Facebook or Twitter. You can also join us on YouTube and Flickr and if you want to support the work of our clinics you can visit our Donate page. Thanks!
