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Amnesty want Indian Govt. to raise Bhopal gas issue with US president Barack Obama
January 23, 2015 | By Sikh Siyasat Bureau
New Delhi: Ahead of the keenly-watched India visit of Barack Obama, International Human Rights group Amnesty International yesterday (on Jan. 22) asked Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to raise the issue of Bhopal gas tragedy during his meeting with the US President in India.
“People have been waiting for justice and their rights for decades. The impact of the tragedy is still visible and the toxic chemicals are still stored in a room there.
“Health hazards are being passed on to the next generation. It has been the biggest ever industrial disaster in terms of human impact and the issue still remains an overhang,” Amnesty International secretary general Salil Shetty said in Davos.
“We will surely get our rights… I am ready to sacrifice myself, but for the sake of the movement and my poor people, I will not give up the struggle. Until my last breath, until my pulse stops beating, I will not back down from the fight.”- – Rampyari Bai (90). Rampyari’s daughter-in-law was seven months pregnant on the night of the Bhopal gas leak. When the gas hit the community, she suddenly went into labor. She and her baby died in the hospital soon afterwards. Following the gas leak, Rampyari herself has struggled with cancer.
“Modi must bring it to the attention of Obama,” Salil Shetty told mediapersons on the sidelines of WEF annual meeting. Shetty said that it was strange that US-based Dow Chemicals Co. says that it was different from Union Carbide, while the fact remains they had acquired them with all their assets and liabilities.
“A political will is a must to ensure justice for the people who were affected by the tragedy,” Shetty said, while urging Modi to raise the issue with Obama during his visit to India.
“If you look at how the US took on oil giant BP Plc over the gas leak issue, we understand that a political will can help ensure action against even big corporates on such matters,” he said.
“Dow and Union Carbide cannot duck away from this issue and Obama must be told about it. We are anyway talking about only peanuts when it comes to compensation for the victims vis-a-vis the huge revenues of an industrial giant like Dow,” he said.
Amnesty India has also started an online petition urging US and India to deliver justice to the victims of Bhopal Gas disaster.
A message posted by Amnesty International secretary Salil Shetty, on official website of Amnesty India reads as follows:
There are certain moments in your life you never forget. I was in my early twenties, living in Bangalore, when I heard the news.
On the night of 2nd December, 1984, toxic gas had leaked from a pesticide factory run by Union Carbide, India Ltd spreading fumes over a large residential area in Bhopal.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 people died within just three days of the leak, our researchers at Amnesty International have since estimated. Hundreds of thousands more were poisoned.
Despite the deaths, the many years gone by, and the numbers of people who today still suffer from chronic health conditions as a result of the leak, justice is yet to be served.
Survivors have not received adequate compensation for their injuries, the polluted factory site has not been cleaned up, and the companies involved have not been held to account.
Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of one of the world’s worst industrial disasters.
Thirty years on, it is time that those who failed to prevent responsible for the horrors of Bhopal must be held to account and made to pay. But the central actor, a US corporation, is an absconder from justice.
US-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) has repeatedly refused to face criminal charges of culpable homicide in India. The Dow Chemical Company, which bought UCC in 2001, has shown a similar arrogant disregard for the Indian legal system.
The United States government has acted as a safe haven for UCC and Dow, ignoring its responsibility to ensure that US companies are held accountable for human rights abuses elsewhere in the world.
Meanwhile, the Indian government itself has consistently underestimated the number of people who were killed or injured in the aftermath of the leak, and has also failed to ensure a clean-up of the factory site.
We stand with the survivors of Bhopal in their campaign for justice.
Together, we ask the Government of the United States to apply political pressure to ensure that Dow and UCC comply with Indian court orders, and the companies pay adequate compensation to the survivors and cover the costs of the clean-up of the Bhopal site.
We ask the Government of India to ensure that survivors of the gas leak get the compensation they deserve and the medical treatment they need. We also ask it to urgently clean up the Bhopal site, ultimately making the companies responsible for the pollution foot the bill.
In September, Prime Minister Modi and President Obama expressed the need to renew the US-India relationship, based on a shared desire for justice and equality.
There is no better place to start than Bhopal. Thirty years is too long to wait for justice and remedy. The wait must end. Now.
Salil Shetty
Secretary General
Amnesty International
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Related Topics: Amnesty International, Barack Obama, Human Rights, Indian State, Narendra Modi, United States of America
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