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NEWS > BUSINESS > BHOPAL EXECUTIVES THE LATEST VICTIMS OF TRAGEDY
BHOPAL EXECUTIVES THE LATEST VICTIMS OF TRAGEDY
June 8 2010
Bhopal, India – Though not widely known in the western world, the Bhopal disaster stands as one of the most extreme examples of man-made natural disasters. As oil continues to coat the beaches and marshes of the gulf states, threatening wild life
and fiscal livelihood, we are reminded of the ability of human beings to cause damage to other human beings. No matter the damage that ultimately occurs in the region, it will pale in comparison to the Bhopal gas leak which even today, twenty-five years after it first occurred, is still harming lives.
It was the night of December 2 1984 when the Bhopal gas plant, owned by Union Carbide, began to leak Methyl Isocyanate and other toxins into the environment, exposing 500,000 people, killing thousands and causing generations of birth defects. Even today the plant continues to sicken people, contaminating the groundwater and rain in the region with hundreds of tonnes of chemicals still present at the site. Bhopal stands as not only the greatest industrial accident of all time, but one of the largest manmade losses of life outside of war. For decades everyone involved escaped persecution but now 7 executives from the plant have been handed jail terms of two years and fines, a verdict that has many pondering that horror of these latest victims of the Bhopal disaster.
“It is good in a sense that it is establishes a sort of landmark precedent for future action on corporate accountability. Activists have accused the public prosecutors of being not strong enough. On the other hand there is a technical issue of how much one can charge somebody of negligence. Of course there is the issue of comparing the safety standards applied in the US and those in India,” said Narayanan Madhavan, an editor for the Hindustan Times. “We also need to be careful with how far we go in pursuing justice. Revenge is something totally different and what these people will suffer in prison is not equivalent to the deformed children or early deaths but it is close. We must be careful that in search of justice that we simply do not create more victims.”
Luckily Warren Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide, has been able to evade such tragedy after fleeing India after his arrest on manslaughter. He currently resides on his estate in the Hamptons.
“Incidents like this are truly tragic. It’s much like what is happening in the Gulf though with far more birth defects. No one involved wanted any of this to happen yet it did and now people are stuck dealing with it. Tony Hayward didn’t want his rig to explode, and Warren Anderson didn’t want to poison thousands of people but that’s what happened,” said Scrape TV Disaster analyst Walter Lim. “I mean how long does the recrimination need to go on. The leak happened and then it stopped. People died but that is in the past. How far back do you go to punish sins?”
Reportedly, the executives now on their way to jail are very unhappy about the whole thing.
“Do we punish the descendants of slave owners for the actions of their ancestors? Absolutely not. The past is the past and people need to move on which is the case here. You could make an argument for getting those chemicals out of the water supply but realistically couldn’t they just get a couple of Coke machines down there?,” continued Lim. “Obviously someone needs to answer for this crime but it has been so long and they are really, really sorry about killing all those people. As an act of grace and dignity that apology should just be accepted and everyone should move on.”
The fine levied on all the executives is about $2100 USD, which is like millions of Rupees.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
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