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Bhopal Medical Appeal

internationalist | 08.01.2002 16:16

Link to appeal for funds for Bhopal Medical Appeal, from UK section of Pesticide Action Network:

internationalist
- Homepage: http://www.labournet.net/other/0201/bhopal1.html

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Go read the appeal

08.01.2002 18:31

Follow the link and read the appeal.

This is a small excerpt:

What do you suppose the outcome should have been? Abject apologies, sincere regret? Generous compensation paid to families who had lost loved ones and breadwinners?

Wouldn’t those whose health had been destroyed have received both compensation and medical care? This was a huge American corporation with assets of billions.

But if you imagine that the mess has been cleared up, that the medical problems have been dealt with, that adequate compensation has been paid to the victims, you will have to think again.

Seventeen years later, virtually nothing has been done for most gas victims of Bhopal. Breathlessness, aches and pains, giddiness, stomach cramps, eye problems, headaches ? these are endemic. More than 120,000 people are still critically ill, unable to work.

The company, Union Carbide, now merged with Dow Chemical, has washed its hands of the problem. In 1989 Union Carbide agreed to pay $479 million, an amount so pitifully and obviously inadequate that its share price leapt for joy. Carbide’s money provided an average $793 for each person who had been affected by the gas. In the event, most victims have received no more than $200 to $300, not even enough to buy seventeen years’ worth of aspirin. Many have received nothing at all.

disgusted of planet earth