Bhopal gas leak survivors urge Modi, Obama to mete out justice

Various organisations today demanded that leaders of both countries should stop protecting corporate interests

Survivours of Bhopal gas disaster today demanded that Indian government should urge the US president Barack Obama to make the Dow Chemical Company - a US corporation - obey to abide by the Indian laws and take liabilities of the Bhopal gas disaster.

"Bhopal was the original "Make in India: in the profoundest sense of the phrase, and the Indian government and the US government should work in harmony to end the Bhopal gas disaster enter the fourth decade," said Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information & Action, an orgnisation working in the interest of the survivours of the Bhopal gas disaster.

Various organisations have today demanded that leaders of both countries should stop protecting corporate interests over the lives and health of common people and sought reflection and course correction for ending the Bhopal disaster.

In December last year, survivor organisations had written a letter to President Obama to acknowledge the central role played by the United Sates government in the creation of the disaster in Bhopal and in the denial of justice to the victims.

"Warren Anderson, who recently died in Florida, USA was charged with manslaughter, grievous assault and several other offences. In spite many attempts from the Indian government to seek his extradition and the US governments denial of extradition sent the message around the world that US corporation are not bound by law or human rights in the countries in which they operate," Rashida Bee, President of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Stationery Karmchari Sangh said.

Another organization Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pensionbhogee Sangharsh Morcha has said that the Dow Chemical Company has operated as if they are above the law in India and continue to deny it has any liability or even connection to Bhopal disaster. "Dow Chemical Company has been ignoring summons issued by the Bhopal district court in the ongoing legal case against the corporation," Balkrishna Namdeo of the organization said.

The organization and survivours have put their demand on the basis that Obama has made British Petroleum pay 20 billion dollars against oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

"We would like to ask him how his conscience allows him to support two US corporations that paid a tiny fraction of that amount for two thousand times more fatalities," ask another activist Nawab Khan said adding, "Additionally 50 thousand living in the vicinity of the now abandoned pesticide factory have had their ground water contaminated with toxic chemicals and heavy metals that have leached from recklessly buried hazardous waste. The contamination continues to spread and find new victims every day and US corporations continue to deny its liability."