Remembering that night: special 20th anniversary newsletter

The autumn 2004 newsletter commemorates the 20th anniversary of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal and describes the work of the Sambhavna Clinic. Supporters will shortly be receiving their copies through the post, but you can download it here.

In this issue:

- Aziza's Story, what happened to Sambhavna community health worker Aziza remembers the horrors of that night.
- Excerpts from an important new book THE BHOPAL SAGA by Dr Ingrid Eckerman.
- Sambhavna's own emergency blood donor programme
- A pioneering study using yoga to alleviate menstrual problems
- Progress report on the new clinic, due to open on the 20th anniversary
- Terry's garden diary, the latest growings-on in our medicinal herb garden
- The joy of selfless service, four of our inspiring community volunteers talk about their work
- The irresistible power of nothing. The story of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB)
- A photostrip by Sarvadarshi Gupta showing what happened when the survivors tried to do their own clean up of the toxic factory
- Glastonbury litterpickers and other heroic fundraisers here in the UK, our thanks and where the money goes

Get your copy of the whole newsletter here. (Huge PDF file, 17.4 mb)
Or look at PDFs of individual spreads here
Please support our work. You can make card donations via the link on the left.

Bhopal.Org is undergoing treatment

July 19 2004. Stage one of the work is to reorganise and rewrite the existing material. This will take another few days. Stage two will begin the addition of new material, including all available medical research studies on the Union Carbide gas disaster, plus an expanded section on traditional herbal medicine and information on major health issues in the city.

Please be patient while the site changes. Some links may not work or stop working. All will be sorted out soon. Please contact us with your suggestions or to report problems.

Coming soon to Bhopal.Org, online card donations from anywhere in the world

The new donation system, powered by WorldPay will soon be up and running on this site, enabling supporters to make donations in any currency from anywhere in the world. The money collected by the Bhopal Medical Appeal goes to fund the work of the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal which gives free treatment to victims of the 1984 gas disaster and also to victims of the ongoing water pollution.

The website is in the process of being restructured and redesigned in order to give you quick access to every aspect of the medical disaster in Bhopal.

Right: An alternative view of the world, al-Idrisi's world map, Arabic, 1154 - 1456 A.D. (Oriented with South at the top) Click the image for a larger view. Read more about al-Idrisi and his map making here.

Meet Rashida, Champa & Sathyu
in London or Brighton, May 18, 19

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi, winners of the 2004 Goldman Prize will be in Britain between 16-20 May accompanied by Satinath Sarangi of the Sambhavna Trust & Clinic. Rashida and Champa both receive care at the Sambhavna Clinic and all three are keen to meet and thank donors and supporters whoseunflagging generosity makes the Clinic possible.

The Goldman Award is giveneach year "for sustained and important efforts" by six 'heroes of the environment' worldwide. Its recipients win a "no strings attached" prize of $125,000 - the largest and most highly regarded award in the world for grassroots environmentalists.

Champa and Rashida have decided to donate the entire sum of the award money to a trust that will provide medical assistance to Bhopal children born with deformities, run income generating projects for women survivors and institute an award for ordinary people fighting extraordinary battles against corporate crime in India

Come and meet these amazing people.

Tuesday 18 May, 7.00 pm
Brighthelm Centre, North Street, Brighton

Wednesday 19 May, 3.00 pm
St James's Church Piccadilly, London SW1

Plus Brighton Festival Events

In this newsletter, a visit to an area affected by water poisoning from the derelict factory, two Sambhavna patients, Rashida Bi and Champa Devi Shukla win the 2004 Goldman Award (see www.bhopal.net), using yoga to treat diabetes, Sambhavna works with Canadian doctors to research hidden long term effects of gas exposure, fighting TB with Ramesh bhai, French gynaecologists and a French pathologist work with Sambhavna to set up a effective system for the detection and treatment of cervical cancer, news from donors and supporters, information about the progress of the new clinic, Terry Allen writes about our medicinal herb garden, 100 fun ways to fundraise and volunteering opportunities.

Get it here or click the image on the right. (Caution, huge PDF, 13.5mb)

19 years of chemical nightmare:
the facts behind our 2003 appeal

This year's appeal, marking the 19th anniversary of the gas disaster in Bhopal, is based on the stories of survivors, who somehow escaped the carnage of 3rd December 1984, only to find their lives devastated by continuing illness, made worse by the lack of proper medical care and a callous corporation which did, and continues to do, everything it can to obstruct justice and obscure truth.

From day one, Union Carbide has refused to hand over the medical information it holds about the gases that killed thousands and left more than a hundred thousand chronically ill. As survivors struggled to cope, the death factory dealt them a second blow.

Union Carbide left Bhopal without cleaning up its factory. Toxic chemicals abandoned on the site have leaked into the ground water and poisoned local drinking wells. Despite knowing the danger to local people, Union Carbide conspired for more than ten years to keep this knowledge secret. Carbide's new owner Dow Chemical has continued to demonstrate the utmost indifference to the plight of the victims. It refuses to clean the factory. It will not hand over the medical information.

When you know the facts you will understand why we carefully used the word "terror" to describe what Union Carbide and Dow have done in Bhopal.

Read our 2003 appeal. (As it appeared in the Guardian 6 Dec 2003)

The facts behind the appeal. The text annotated line by line with supporting evidence, documents and pictures.

Click image to read appeal, PDF filesize 360K

Dow of Napalm and Agent Orange,
how do you live with yourselves?

We could not understand why you continue to ignore the suffering of those your derelict and abandoned factory is still poisoning in Bhopal? Wasn't it enough that you gassed us, without now also poisoning our water?

Now we begin to know you. In Vietnam thousands still bear the scars of your napalm bombs. Your dioxins, sprayed in Agent Orange, continue to this day to poison and malform children in Vietnam. This article from The Guardian tells the shocking story.

For a historical perspective on the death and suffering caused by Dow Chemical and its 100% subsidiary Union Carbide, see here.

The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association last month published a ground breaking study carried out by Sambhavna which conclusively proves that the poison gases released by Union Carbide's factory in Bhopal on December 3rd 1984 have had a severe medical impact on a generation unborn at the time of the disaster.

The findings, which relate to physical abnormalities of male children born to women who breathed Carbide's gases, not only further the understanding of the long term effects of methyl-isocyanate exposure, but have important legal implications as the question of compensation for these children must now arise.

More information

JAMA extract (PDF file)

This newsletter’s name arose from an attempt to capture the spirit of the Bhopal Medical Appeal. Someone suggested, ‘saat, saat, saat’, which in Hindi means ‘together, together, together’, but with a slight twist of the tongue could also mean ‘seven, seven, seven.’

The Appeal was launched in 1994, when a man from Bhopal came to Britain to tell whoever would listen about the calamitous condition of the still suffering victims of the Union Carbide gas disaster. Those who met him learned that after ten years, the survivors had received no meaningful medical help.

The survivors realised that they must help themselves, because nobody else would. They wanted to open their own free clinic for gas victims. They were joined in the UK by a few individuals who put the mechanics of the Appeal together. They were in turn joined in this effort by you, and other like minded people.

IN THE BHOPAL MEDICAL APPEAL "WE" DO NOT ASK "YOU" TO HELP "US" HELP "THEM.

"WE" MEANS ALL OF US, ALL TOGETHER.

CLICK PICTURE TO DOWNLOAD NEWSLETTER
( large PDF file 2.5mb)

A child is born: the facts about Bhopal's
'monstrous births'

Private papers released by a court in New York last month reveal that Union Carbide knew since 1989 that its factory was dangerously polluted and posed a danger to ground water and thus drinking wells. Many of the chemicals named in Carbide's own papers, and in subsequent studies by a number of different organisations, are capable of causing cancers and birth defects.

"Horrifying births" in great numbers began to be reported in Bhopal soon after the disaster, but panicky government officials tried to hide the facts. That culture of secrecy persists to this day, but recent research shows that the births have not stopped, and are now occurring in a generation of women who were themselves infants at the time of the disaster. With pictures by Andy Moxon, this report contains a never-before-published account of a meeting with the researcher who has at last broken the silence. Story here.

The story too horrifying to tell
in a newspaper

18 years after the 1984 disaster, the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal is still poisoning people. In 1999 a Greenpeace study (PDF file) found that the drinking wells of nearby communities were contaminated by chemicals leaking from the abandoned and now-derelict site. Then, in February this year mercury, lead and organochlorines were found in the breast-milk of local women (Word Document). While Union Carbide and its new owner Dow Chemical continue to deny liability and refuse to pay for a clean-up, secret Carbide papers obtained last month during a New York court case show that the company knew as long ago as 1989 that its site was dangerously poisoned, and must have realised the risk to ground water and thus drinking supplies...but they never said a word.