That night 2-3 December 1984

I havent put information from sessions I attended since lunch. I pick up the thread again by starting with the Bhopal session by Sathyu. Sathyu or Satinath Sarangi is a leader in the struggle for justice for the victims of Bhopal.

This presentation was supposed to be made by Rachna Dhingra another leader of the survivors organizations but an accident resulted in the cancellation of her trip.

He is showing

• the scenes from the night


• misinformation for treatment that the company gave on that night and the next few days


• the overwhelming number of victims/patients that arrived at the hospitals


• the company ran away from criminal cases, manslaughter charges etc. It sold off its shares in India and continues to be a business in the US and continues to sell its products to India


• the company knew as far back as 1982 that chemicals were seeping through to groundwater


• the company knew of the hazards


• the company knew of the malfunctioning or turned off safety systems and yet didnt inform the local population and governments


• the company conveniently blamed the entire accident on a worker and called it a sabotage while every piece of evidence points to the corporate irresponsibility of the company


• as of today since the disaster an additiona l 20000 people have died


• over 100,000 people are affected


• samples of breast milk of mothers in bhopal show extremely toxic chemicals


• Bhopal is not the only carnage Dow Chemical is responsible for there are many examples of its disastrous corporate crimes on the web


• Besides fighting for justice for the victims we also want to prevent this from happening again


• We want to prevent the thought that "people are expendable"


• The people affected were those who eke out a living and whose livelihood is now affected by the physical debiliations of the chemicals on their bodies


• People got $500 for injuries that will now ail them for the rest of their lives... respiratory, abdominal, eye, skin


• The water that is planned to be supplied is also in the line of flow of the contaminated water.


• Dow continues to receive support form Govt. of India to expand its business in India. They got Ratan Tata to write a letter to Montek Singh Ahluwalia saying Indian Govt. should withdraw an application asking for $100,000 for clean up of Bhopal from the High Court


• We worked out ways to work together despite internecine squabbles among various survivors organizations.


• Now there are 4 organizations and decision making is by conscensus.


• A large number of the activists and people fighting are women. Women are everywhere caring for their husbands, children, family members affected by the disaster and its after effects. They are also the most affected by the toxic chemicals.


• Women have done various creative actions like "Jhaadu maaro aandolan". When Dow CEO was visiting Houston, he was faced with activists holding jhaadu and he was completely taken aback.


• Women went to tie raakhi to the chief minister and he promised clean water. But when he didnt do it and the women tried to confront him, he accused them of dacoitry. "Bhai bana kasaayi..." was a song born out of this incident.


• He is showing pictures from the 2006 padyaatra


• He is showing pictures from the successes of the 2007 padyaatra


• Now he is showing pictures from the Sambhaavna clinic, how it was started.


• Sambhavna provides ayurvedic, allopathic and yogic treatments to exposure induced diseases. Sambhavna conducted many tests and experiments on victims and found that a combination of the three was very helpful, especially the addition of yogic and ayurvedic care.


• Funds are through individual donations, royalties from Dominique Lapiere's book "5 mins past midnight in Bhopal". This covers 10% of the expenses


• But expenses are growing and more than half of the volunteers are victims of the disaster themselves


• Future plans Sambhavna: International Center for Environmental Health (lay epidemiology, applied toxicology, healing exposure induced injuries)


• AID Joined the Bhopal Campaign in 2002


• Getting NOC for clean up from Indian Govt, Scrapping of Dow-IOC deal are some of the successes over the past few years


• Chiraag trust- for vegetable vendors and solar vendors


• Rashida Bi and Champa Devi won the Goldman Env. Prize ($125,000) and they gave all this money to the "Chingaari Trust" instead of using it for themselves. They among other things give a "Chingaari Grant against corporate crime" to a woman from the hinterland (non prominent activist) fighting corporate crime in India.


• Pictures from Oriya basti school, herbal garden, eye clinic


• Publication of research in JAMA from ICMR about effects on children but when govt prevented this from happening Sambhavna started to do this research and found effects of the disaster on children as the grow and even post puberty


• Shapiro resolution, amnesty support, "Yes men action"


• State govt acknowledges responsibility for medical care and rehabilitation