ACTION | Activism

From Bhopal to the Bay: Fighting Corporations Creating Industrial Wastelands

I was just five months old when — in the middle of the night — a cloud of 27 tons of toxic gases leaked from a US-owned Union Carbide pesticide plant and turned my hometown of Bhopal, India, into an apocalyptic disaster.

From Bhopal to the Bay: Fighting Corporations Creating Industrial Wastelands International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB) compensation protest in India; from the ‘ICJB Events in India’ ICJB Collection on Bhopal.net.

I was just five months old when a cloud of toxic gases leaked from a US-owned pesticide plant and turned my home town of Bhopal, India, into an apocalyptic disaster.

In the middle of the night of Dec. 2, 1984, over 27 tons of toxic gases seeped out of the plant controlled by Union Carbide Corporation (UCC).[1] The plant staff did not warn the local authorities or the neighboring communities of the leak, even as terror-stricken people fled from their homes, suffering from violent coughing fits and severe burning in their eyes.[2]

I lived with my parents, older siblings, and my aunt. Our house was full of thick gas. My mother carried me in her arms, as she and my aunt tried to run away from the gas. My father hurriedly stacked my brother and sisters onto his bicycle, in an attempt to escape the poison. But despite my parents’ best efforts, all of us were badly exposed.

Exposure to those toxic gases killed over 10,000 people within the first 3 days of the leak.

Immediately after the 2-3 December, 1984 disaster in Bhopal; from the ‘Immediately After the Disaster’ ICJB Collection on Bhopal.net.

The gas leak in 1984 was in part the result of the substandard and faulty design of the hazardous waste management system designed by UCC. In addition, for many years, reckless dumping of hazardous waste led to severe contamination of soil and groundwater in and around the premises of the UCC plant. These premises were essentially in the backyards of poor and marginalized communities in Bhopal, like mine. I live in Arif Nagar, a neighborhood that is less than 1,000 feet away from the now-abandoned plant, where the groundwater still remains contaminated.

Our communities were harmed by our proximity to the plant not because of lax regulations on the part of the Indian government, but because the US Secretary of State helped UCC ‘navigate’ regulatory hurdles in the 1970s when they were preparing to build their pesticide plant. In fact, Henry Kissinger facilitated some of this ‘navigation.’[3]  

In the past almost 40 years, UCC – and Dow Chemical Company (Dow), which later acquired UCC – never cleaned up the site. As a result, over 550,000 people across multiple generations have suffered a range of afflictions, including increased rates of cancer, reproductive problems, neurological and neuromuscular diseases, and mothers having babies with birth defects and congenital deformities.[4]

Outside the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India; from the ‘Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal’ ICJB Collection on Bhopal.net.

Many from my family became gravely ill because of the gas leak that fateful day. Several of them died. I lost my younger sister to kidney failure. My older sister also suffers from kidney disease and is waiting for a kidney transplant. And I have a 14-year-old niece, who was born with severe physical and mental disabilities, resembling those of several children in my neighborhood.

Even though the UCC chairman, Warren Anderson, was arrested by Indian authorities within days of the disaster, he was released due to pressure by the US government. Warren Anderson never returned to India, with the US government playing a significant role in obstructing extradition efforts.[5] UCC never appeared before Indian courts to face charges. Dow only appeared once in 2023 to contest jurisdiction. 

And US courts dismissed all cases related to the gas leak and those exposed to groundwater contamination from the UCC plant in Bhopal before there could be any deliberation on the merits.

No US companies or individuals have been held accountable for the world’s worst industrial disaster that resulted in over 22,000 deaths, more than half a million people disabled or diseased over multiple generations, and widespread and persistent environmental contamination.


Inside the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, India; from the ‘Union Carbide Factory in Bhopal’ ICJB Collection on Bhopal.net.

There has been no justice for us.

And so, we, the survivors of the Bhopal disaster and our descendants, have taken action. We have organized ourselves and led successful campaigns. We raised money for a clinic of our own, which has provided much needed healthcare to the survivors and conducted research supporting our efforts to achieve restorative justice. We have traveled across the world to build solidarity.

During our current 40th anniversary US tour of the Bhopal disaster, I have been meeting many activists from frontline communities across the country. Their stories echo the same rally cry: we cannot let profiteering corporations turn our backyards into industrial wastelands.

After decades of laborious efforts seeking justice with very few victories, a new approach is needed. One that combines the ideas and enthusiasm of millions of grassroots changemakers around the world and creates a force for change that cannot be ignored by state and federal law- and policy-makers, international bodies, and governments across the world.

To this end, I will be participating in the inaugural Ecosymbionts Regenerate Synergy Meeting in Oakland, California, US (part of From Bhopal to the Bay on 25 September, 2024), bringing together changemakers from over 30 diverse grassroots organizations, including Sierra Club, Communities for a Better Environment, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Poder, Earth Island Institute, Curyj, Indigenous Justice, Idle No More, and Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives.

ICJB candle-lit vigil in India; from the ‘ICJB Events in India’ ICJB Collection on Bhopal.net.

Activists organizing against the polluting Chevron refinery in Richmond and those trying to get the radioactive-toxic waste contamination at Bayview-Hunters Point cleaned up will brainstorm with Indigenous leaders fighting extractive corporate activities and agroecologists empowering formerly incarcerated people through skills cultivating food sovereignty.

Now is the time to synergistically generate and implement novel collaborative actions to disrupt the global system enabling corporations to extract resources from humans and ecosystems, so that we can prevent widespread ecocide and injustice from continuing.
 


[1] Bhopal Methyl Isocyanate Incident Investigation Team Report, op cit, p. 24.

[2] Amnesty International, Clouds of Injustice – Bhopal Disaster 20 Years On (Index: ASA 20/015/2004), 29 November 2004, https:// www.amnesty.ch/fr/themes/economie-et-droits-humains/exemples/justice-pour-bhopal/Clouds_of_injustice_Bericht_2004.pdf, pp. 7-8.

[3] Larry Everest, Behind the Poison Cloud: Union Carbide’s Bhopal Massacre, 1987, p. 130; also see Surya Deva, Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations, Humanizing Business, 2012, p. 29.

[4] Curative Petition (C) No. 345-347 of 2010 (against the impugned Judgment and Order dated 14th and 15th February 1989, 4th May 1989 and the Judgment and Order dated 3rd October 1991 passed by this Hon’ble Court), in Union of India v. Union Carbide Corporation and Ors.

[5] Amnesty International, Injustice Incorporated: Corporate Abuses and the Human Right to Remedy (Index: POL 30/001/2014), 7 March 2014, https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/pol30/001/2014/en/, pp. 41-43.

author Farhat Jahan (she) is a survivor of the 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, and for several decades has been an advocate on behalf of the over 550,000 victims of the world's worst industrial disaster.
author_affiliation South Asia | Bhopal
residence India
organizational International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (ICJB)