25th anniversary of the Bhopal mass murder
It is now 25 years since, in
Bhopal, the state capital of Madhya Pradesh in Central India, in the early
hours of the morning of 3 December 1984, forty five tons of escaping gas,
methyl isocyanate (MIC), from the Union Carbide pesticides plant surged through
the little streets of the shanty town that had grown up around it. On through
the city and into the surrounding countryside it drifted. For some, death came
as they slept, others woke with burning eyes and throats. And as the panic set
in among those who had not already succumbed to the poison all around them,
they ran, gulping even more of the toxic gas into their lungs leaving trails of
dead and dying in the most horrible contortions as they writhed their last
moments in unspeakable agony. Before the week was out the death toll stood at
around 3,000 (the number of deaths directly attributable to the ‘accident’ has
risen over time to over 20,000) with more than 300,000 affected by the deadly
poison. About 2,000 animals had died and 7,000 more were severely affected
along with most crops in and around Bhopal.
Every year we are forced to listen to remembrance
services and news broadcasts on television and radio going on about 11
September 2001 when representatives of the third world victims of US
imperialism hit back at the beast that sucks the life from them and their
children. Every year the bourgeois newspapers drag out this tale and wave it
around for all to see, yet again, in justification of the invasions, occupations
and blockades that imperialism is carrying on throughout the world. But what
about the huge carnage that imperialism visits upon the poor of the world? Not
just the unspeakable cruelty that is used in their wars of brigandage, no, we
mean the carnage that ensues every day all around the world as workers and
their families are sacrificed on the altar of maximum profit – the only god
that is recognised by any and every imperialist nation without exception. The
names are far too many to remember, the ‘incidents’ of industrial murder too
numerous to record even if one only includes the worst cases, but Bhopal should
be remembered because it is a story that shows exactly how exploitation of
third world nations and workers is carried out. It was described at the time
as the worst-ever industrial ‘accident’, but the very word accident paints a
picture of something that could not have been foreseen, an unintentional,
unfortunate chance occurrence, something for which no one can be blamed. Let us
be quite clear, this was imperialist genocide of the type that happens
everywhere, admittedly, to a far greater degree in the third world than in the
imperialist countries, but even in their home countries the imperialists commit
industrial murder against workers.
Industrial murders in developing
countries
Union Carbide, the American multi-national that
owned the plant had opened it in Bhopal because there was a workforce available
that could deal with the high tech needs of the company; the Indian Governments
both local and national had agreed to minimise any controls or interference
with the running of the plant to get these jobs for their people; and, with the
low cost of living, wages and other overheads would be minimal compared to
their existing plants in the USA. It must be pointed out that in the US these
plants were never allowed to be built near residential areas for safety
reasons; yet in India it was built not only in the middle of a large city but a
shanty town of workers dwellings was allowed right up to the plant’s fences.
The ‘accident’ happened because of cuts in the
workforce, cuts in safety procedures, cuts in costly safety apparatus; in fact,
anything that could be cut was cut to increase profits as the logic of
imperialism dictates the necessity of any cuts, any action which produces
profit, for in the imperialist world profit is the sole reason for all
production.
And after the industrial mass murder at Bhopal,
within days in fact, the company restarted production, on safety grounds they
said, to use up the MIC before the plant could be closed down. But if they were
so safety conscious, one has to ask why so much chemical waste was left to
drain into the soil or evaporate into the air, and why the company could not or
would not tell the local authorities what these chemicals were?
It is obvious that Union Carbide were intent on
getting the last penny’s worth out of Bhopal before walking away. Again we have
to stress, imperialists don’t cut corners because they necessarily have to,
they cut them whenever and wherever they can to increase profits to the maximum
possible.
In that same year of 1984 there were two other
cases of industrial mass murder by imperialism in the third world. The first
was in Cubatao, Sao Paulo, Brazil, where a fractured pipeline caused a petrol
explosion which ripped through a shanty town killing 508 people. The company,
Petrobras, claimed that ‘only’ 90 people died and even tried to blame the
victims for illegally being on company land. The second was in San Juan, Ixhuatepec,
Mexico, where an explosion of liquid nitrogen gas (LNG) reservoirs, holding
some 90,000 barrels, engulfed the shantytown surrounding it killing 452 and
injuring 4,284 inhabitants.
Aftermath of Bhopal
The aftermath of the Bhopal tragedy was years of
wrangling in courts, both in India and America, as Union Carbide sought to
avoid paying anything at all initially (at one point they even tried to claim
that terrorism by Sikh extremists was to blame) and as little as possible
eventually. Although they agreed a settlement in 1989 ,not a penny reached any
of the victims until 1992 and then only selectively. Twenty Five years on there
are still victims of that day living in poverty and agony, there are people who
either were not yet born or who have moved to Bhopal since that ‘tragedy’ whose
health is ruined because of the massive amount of pollution Union Carbide left
behind at the plant as they just walked away.
India, as a whole, and Bhopal in particular, had
extensive systems of laws governing industrial production, occupational health
and safety, labour relations, trade practices, and pollution control. Bhopal
possessed a large pool of skilled labour trained at local technical
institutions. These attributes created a unique ‘industrial culture’ that supported
a wide range of technologies. But effective regulation of technologies was
inhibited by ‘political and practical considerations’. The government was
reluctant to place a heavy industrial safety and pollution-control burden on
industry for fear of losing job opportunities. Once again proving that under
imperialism it does not matter what laws are in force or how many of them there
are, when they stand in the way of profit for the imperialist they are ignored
and discarded.
It has to be said that that both the local and
national government behaved in a thoroughly corrupt and disgraceful way.
Instead of pursuing Union Carbide, they did everything to frustrate the
attempts of the victims and their relations from getting justice.
Opposition to imperialist
brutality
Imperialism is the killer in the workplace.
Imperialism is the monster that starves children to death. Imperialism is the
slaughter machine on battlefields and in places like Bhopal. But imperialism is
also the cunning fox, which will pay workers in one country a few pennies more
to keep them divided, create a labour aristocracy to divide them and spread the
evils of racism and sexism to keep them apart. However, in Bhopal a movement
has grown up over the years, fighting for proper compensation, fighting to have
the murderers tried for murder in India, fighting to prevent the same thing
happening again. This movement recognises that the continuing poisoning that
goes on in Bhopal from eating locally produced food, and even just by living in
and around the city, is a direct result of imperialist exploitation, it
recognises that the only way to stop this ever happening again is to overturn
imperialism.
Following a month of events to highlight the
murders and the unaccountability of the murderers, the continuing contamination
and the cover-ups, a massive public meeting was held on 3 December this year
outside the Union Carbide plant.
According to a report in the journal Peoples
Democracy, the weekly organ of the CPI(M), when addressing this meeting the
Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) President, Dr M K Pande, said that “even
after 25 years of the worst ever industrial tragedy, people are continuing to
die due to the poisonous gas effect, but neither correct and efficient
treatment is being given them nor is there any planning for rehabilitation of
the affected”.
He told the gathering that not only were the
gas-affected not given justice but there also exists the danger of the entire
nation becoming a camp-follower of the USA.
Imperialism is indulging in inhuman exploitation of
the developing countries and meting out brutality to the hapless people, and it
is the main source of injustice to the people of third world countries. He
further said “we must remember the lesson derived from the struggle of the
last 25 years that without intensifying the struggle against imperialism the
struggle of the gas-affected people would never fructify.”
The meeting culminated with those present demanding
entry to the plant to see if the government claim that there is nothing
poisonous left inside was true. The police and the ‘Rapid Action Force’ were
on hand to forcefully stop them doing this, which can only be taken as an
admission that toxic material in large quantities remains inside that plant and
will continue to poison the soil and water around the plant. The protesters,
however, will not go away and are determined to have justice. The imperialists
have made another army of anti-imperialist fighters to help with its eventual
downfall.
For our part in Britain we must
learn everything there is to know about imperialism, We must stand alongside
any and every enemy of imperialism whatever their colour or nationality. At
times this will make us deeply unpopular but we must try to teach the
proletariat the truth, not as an academic exercise but in order to create the
one thing we need more than any other, a party of the proletariat which has
the confidence of the proletariat and which understands the world we live in
through Marxist-Leninist analysis and is also steeled to lead our class on the
only road that will destroy imperialism, the road of socialist revolution!