BHOPAL GAS DISASTER VICTIMS STILL WAIT FOR JUSTICE.. 19 years after the Bhopal Gas disaster occurred, and Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) leaked from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal on 2/3rd December 1984, the victims still wait for justice. • The payments of pitifully small amounts as compensation • the shrinking of their remedies, including the way the appeals system has been worked to reduce the entitlement of the victims; • the difficulties in access to medical care • the disbelief, even all these years later, that they were indeed victims of the disaster • the absence of a legal aid system • the immobility of the state in the matter of the extradition of Warren Anderson of the UCC; the reduced gravity of the charges against the Indian accused; and the snail’s pace progress of the trial • the vanishing corporation, where mergers result in the original corporation pretending to a civil death, and the vanishing liability. The recent takeover of UCC by Dow Chemicals is an instance. There are various ways in which this happens, including: denial, where the suspicion of ‘bogus’ claims taints consideration of all claims; recategorisation of claims, which recognises only a reduced level of suffering; the nonrecognition of certain injuries, including that caused to the children born to affected people, or of latent effects which manifest over time. • Continued care of the victims of Bhopal • access to the information gathered by ICMR, and • monitoring and research connected with the Bhopal Gas disaster, at least over a period of fifty years have been set out as priorities owed to the victims of the disaster. A Draft Code of Conduct for Corporations was discussed by a group of persons brought together in Geneva by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on March 30- 31, 2001. The First Draft Code envisages • social responsibility of corporations, and • corporations as human rights watchdogs.
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 09:02:51 +0000
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