Bhopal Survivors End Fast, Vow to Continue Campaign
India-West, Ashfaque Swapan, Posted: May 17, 2003
Bhopal gas disaster survivors Rashida Bee and Champa Devi, currently on a trip to the U.S., ended their hunger strike May 12 in front of the Mahatma Gandhi statue near the Indian embassy in Washington, D.C. as they vowed to continue their campaign to make U.S. multinational giant Dow Chemical accept liability for the world's biggest industrial disaster in December 1984 triggered by poisonous gas leaking from a pesticide plant, killing over 3,000 people in a few days. The plant was then owned by U.S.-based giant Union Carbide. Dow merged with Union Carbide later, and Bhopal activists say Dow must accept liability for the environmental mess and human misery that the gas disaster has left.
Bhopal activists said they are making good progress in their current U.S. trip, which has included meetings with labor and civic activists here as well as a meeting with Dow CEO William Stavropoulos in Midland, Mich.
"I have gone to various places and asked people to come and join me in the fight against this company," Rasheeda Bee told India-West over the phone from Washington, D.C., a few hours after ending her 12-day hunger strike. "I got great support from people. Plenty of people from all over the world have joined us. They told us they didn't realize what the situation was in Bhopal. 'Only after listening to you do we realize what a big problem Bhopal is in,' (our supporters said.) 'We are with you and the fact is that what's happening in Bhopal can happen anywhere, because this company is all over the place. We think your demand that this company should be accountable to the law is justified.'"
The hunger strike began May 1 in New York's financial district (I-W, May 9) where Bee was joined by Champa Devi and longtime Bhopal activist Satinath Sarangi, who arrived with the two women in the U.S. on a multi-city trip to raise awareness. The trip is being organized by the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, a global coalition led by survivors.
Champa Devi May 12 handed over the hunger strike to supporters around the world, and over 200 people from 19 countries have joined a global "relay hunger strike," according to the Bhopal activist Web site www.bhopal.net.
Earlier, eight days into their indefinite fast, the two women survivors addressed Dow shareholders at Dow's annual general meeting May 8 in Midland, Mich., demanding that the company take responsibility for the health consequences and environmental impacts of their operations in Bhopal and other communities poisoned by Dow and its subsidiaries elsewhere, activists said. They later met Dow CEO Stavropoulos along with Sarangi, who interpreted for them.
Sarangi told India-West the 20-minute meeting was "totally depressing."
"He basically gestured so that we could start speaking, and Rashida Bi told her story and Champa Devi told her story (and) I interpreted, and not a word from him," Sarangi said.
"He had this wooden expression and at the end of it he spoke not one word, he got up and said: 'You must go and talk to your government. We're sorry, we can't do anything.'"
However, Sarangi said that he was heartened by the support he had received from civic and labor activists.
"What we will try to do is broaden this space and we are also trying to meet with Congressman. John Conyers."
Bhopal survivors went to Greendale in north Detroit May 10, to show support for residents fighting alleged water pollution by Canadian company Canflow. In Clare, Mich., they addressed the statewide meeting of the 300,000-member Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers Union.
There are signs that demands of Bhopal survivors are beginning to concern some investors.
"Nearly 20 years after an environmental disaster at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, the tragedy remains a thorn in the side of Dow Chemical Co," the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
"We believe the continuing protests and media coverage around this issue pose a risk to Dow's reputation and undermine Dow's stated commitments to sustainability," said a Dec. 2 letter to company officials signed by San Francisco-based Trillium Asset Management and eight other self-described "socially responsible" investment firms. Trillium said it doesn't own Dow stock but represents clients who do.
Sarangi said during the reminder of the trip he and the two Bhopal survivors will try to build as many new alliances as possible.
"I think we have now made many, many new friends and supporters, opened up many new windows that were unexplored so far, with lot of promise," he said.
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