Adil is one of a thousand stories of struggle and survivorship in Bhopal. You can read Adil's story here
Last week I had the fortune of attending the marches of the 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster in Bhopal, India. Over 2 days, I marched with over a thousand survivors and their families.
To see their conviction, courage, and empowerment 25 years later was humbling.
To see their suffering, anger, and deep-seated sense of injustice was tragic.
Today I got permission from the government to tour the abandoned Union Carbide factory, the ill-fated American-owned pesticide plant which exploded on "that night." Sadly I witnessed a lack of corporate and governmental responsibility for the neighbors. Little environmental clean-up has taken place.
Walls between the contaminated area and the nearby slums had fallen down as children played cricket 50 meters from the infamous tanks which leaked tons of methyl isocyanate shown in the below photo. One kid was collecting firewood next to the tanks. Goats and pigs were feeding inside the contaminated area. While I filmed and photographed near the tanks, I felt light-headed and nauseated. Later, something landed in my eye which burned like acid and I had to wash it with water for several minutes.
You can learn more about the ongoing tragedy through this brief video titled Hush, Baby.
What do they want? Justice
When do they want it?
If you find yourself concerned, compelled, and would like to help take action go to Amnesty International's website to contact either Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh or Dow Chemicals who now owns Union Carbide. You can also get involved with the International Coalition for Justice in Bhopal.Rather than use my words to paraphrase what happened and what's happening, you can read these excerpts from the Bhopal Medical Appeal.
Remembers Aziza Sultan, a survivor: "At about 12.30 am I woke to the sound of my baby coughing badly. In the half light I saw that the room was filled with a white cloud. I heard a lot of people shouting. They were shouting 'run, run'. Then I started coughing with each breath seeming as if I was breathing in fire. My eyes were burning.
Another survivor, Champa Devi Shukla, remembers that "It felt like somebody had filled our bodies up with red chillies, our eyes tears coming out, noses were watering, we had froth in our mouths. The coughing was so bad that people were writhing in pain. Some people just got up and ran in whatever they were wearing or even if they were wearing nothing at all. Somebody was running this way and somebody was running that way, some people were just running in their underclothes. People were only concerned as to how they would save their lives so they just ran.
"Those who fell were not picked up by anybody, they just kept falling, and were trampled on by other people. People climbed and scrambled over each other to save their lives – even cows were running and trying to save their lives and crushing people as they ran." In those apocalyptic moments no one knew what was happening. People simply started dying in the most hideous ways. Some vomited uncontrollably, went into convulsions and fell dead. Others choked to death, drowning in their own body fluids. Many died in the stampedes through narrow gullies where street lamps burned a dim brown through clouds of gas. The force of the human torrent wrenched children's hands from their parents' grasp. Families were whirled apart," reported the Bhopal Medical Appeal in 1994.
"The poison cloud was so dense and searing that people were reduced to near blindness. As they gasped for breath its effects grew ever more suffocating. The gases burned the tissues of their eyes and lungs and attacked their nervous systems. People lost control of their bodies. Urine and feces ran down their legs. Women lost their unborn children as they ran, their wombs spontaneously opening in bloody abortion." According to Rashida Bi, a survivor who lost five gas-exposed family members to cancers, those who escaped with their lives “ are the unlucky ones; the lucky ones are those who died on that night.”
On the night of Dec. 2nd and 3rd, 1984, a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, began leaking 27 tons of the deadly gas methyl isocyanate. None of the six safety systems designed to contain such a leak were operational, allowing the gas to spread throughout the city of Bhopal.[1] Half a million people were exposed to the gas and 20,000 have died to date as a result of their exposure. More than 120,000 people still suffer from ailments caused by the accident and the subsequent pollution at the plant site. These ailments include blindness, extreme difficulty in breathing, and gynecological disorders. The site has never been properly cleaned up and it continues to poison the residents of Bhopal. In 1999, local groundwater and wellwater testing near the site of the accident revealed mercury at levels between 20,000 and 6 million times those expected. Cancer and brain-damage- and birth-defect-causing chemicals were found in the water;
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