24 mai, 2005 02:39
Bhopal victims call for boycott against IOC
Friday, 27 May , 2005, 16:06
Chennai: Calling for a nationwide boycott of the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) in protest against the company's proposed business deal with Union Carbide's new owner Dow Chemical, survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy and environmentalists will stage a demonstration in Mayiladuthurai, the constituency of Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar, tomorrow, demanding cancellation of the deal.
Shahid Noor, an orphan from the Bhopal disaster, who now leads an organisation of 19 Bhopal disaster orphans, will lead the demonstration. He will also flag off a motorcycle rally from Mayiladuthurai to Chennai by the Madras Bulls, a Chennai-based club of 'Bullet' or 'Royal Enfield' enthusiasts, on May 29.
The Tamil Nadu All Drivers Welfare Association, with more than 7,000 members, 'We Feel Responsible', a city-based youth group, and various human rights organisations had extended their support to the boycott call, said Nityanand Jayaraman, a volunteer of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal.
The boycott would continue until the Union government cancelled the deal and blacklisted Dow Chemical, he told reporters here today.
Despite the Union Carbide, wanted in connection with the deaths of thousands of people in the 1984 gas leak from its pesticide factory in Bhopal, being declared as an absconder by an Indian court, the IOC had approved a technology purchase agreement with Dow Chemical to source Union Carbide's technology for the Mono Ethylene Glycol unit at its upcoming naptha refinery at Panipat in Haryana, he alleged.
Nityanand said ICJB volunteers in New Delhi, Bhopal, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram would be announcing the boycott in their cities in the second phase. ''We requested the IOC, the Ministries of Petroleum and Chemicals and various other government bodies not to do business with the killers of Bhopal. But, all these people are more interested in business than justice for the Bhopal survivors,'' he alleged.
Union Carbide was charged with culpable homicide in the Bhopal magistrate's court for its role in the Bhopal disaster. In February 1992, the company was proclaimed an absconder by the Magistrate after it repeatedly failed to honour summons issued by the court.
In January 2005, the Magistrate ordered that summons be issued to Dow Chemical, asking the parent company to produce Union Carbide in court. But, Dow maintained that it did not recognise the Indian court's criminal jurisdiction over Union Carbide.
Recounting his harrowing moments after the Bhopal tragedy, in which he lost both his parents and elder brother, Noor said thousands of tonnes of toxic wastes, generated by Union Carbide, were lying abandoned in and around the factory site. Years of neglect had also caused the poisons from these wastes to leach into the groundwater, he added.
Stating that it was the responsibility of the Union Carbide to remediate the contamination and compensate the victims, he said the government should ensure that the site was speedily cleaned up at Union Carbide or Dow Chemical's cost.
