[Pinder Singhmanik]

I had been meaning to post this yesterday but as we have always a prayerful day on this day each year, it was notpossible.

Now yesterday is 23 years since Bhopal destruction. We had the same kind of thing in Chernobyl.  What I feel is so much difference in what the Indian Authorities have not done for these people who still suffer badly from Union Carbides destruction there. People in the world have done so very much for the children of Chernobyl to give them holidays, and inject monies into making their lives better. Here for Bhopal we have nothing and nothing will ever change. Much interest on the Internet and statements form different government people have given hope until you realise that it is only for the sake of saving their faces.  We had three family members who were working there and hwo lost their lives. We dont want money, we only want someone to help thoe who are still after 23 years having terrible problems in their lives. To stop talking and do something real.


Here is my candle that I light for Bhopal

pinder

[Serena]

And here is mine too  

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[iwanttogoback]

pinder

i can't do these candle symbols, but i'll join you in a prayer for help and healing for the people injured in the bhopal incident.

i can't believe it was 23 years ago, it seems so fresh in my mind.

[priya]

Thoughts to you and yours as well as the other victims and their families of this terrible tragedy.
Yes, twenty-three years ago, and it is, indeed, still fresh in so many minds.

Attached Files

•  candle.gif   9.46K   2 downloads

[Shiver me Timbers]

Like you say, the worst thing is that nobody knows - I spent a week in Bhopal, and when I told my family what had happened there, they didn't have a clue.

Nice place btw, great people....

[cyberhippie]

A sad story of greed, a forum member I know passed through Bhopal Station at this time, how lucky he was that the Station Manager took the decision he did to clear the Station of trains. He was castigated for this for years, only in recent history was it acknowledged he actually saved lives!

[digital drifter]

& we come full circle that dow chemical is going to come to India.

[Somerset]

"Five past Midnight in Bhopal" is a good, but very poignant, book on the subject by Dominique Lapierre. Lapierre also coauthored Freedom at Midnight and I think he also wrote City of Joy. Horrible incident that points out the great difference in which some companies treated developing countries compared with their own. This would never have happened in the US or W. Europe because of safeguards required and enforced. I think Carbide attributed the accident to sabotage by a disgruntled employee,  but there were many other problems associated with the plant prior to the accident, and the plant was adjacent to dense population...similar plants in the west are isolated from populations and with a greater number of safe guards. Industrial 'accidents' also occur here, although their effects are much more subtle (e.g. PCBs disposed of illegally, leading to learning disabilities in Alabama).

There is a magazine advertisement from the time by Union Carbide for India that shows a great white hand pouring a blood red liquid from a test tube onto the soil of an Indian farm, with a chemical plant in the background, and the caption "Science helps build a new India." Tragic irony.

Attached Files

•  Carbide_ad.jpg   51.77K   3 downloads

Edited by Somerset, 06 December 2007 - 09:23 PM.