Bhopal survivors awarded

Bhopal survivors awarded

Andrea Orr, Reuters, San Francisco, California

Twenty years after a Union Carbide gas leak killed 20,000 people in Bhopal, India, two survivors have won a prestigious environmental prize for fighting to hold the company and its parent, Dow Chemical Co., accountable.

Rashida Bee and Champa Devi Shukla were named on Monday in a group of winners of the Goldman Environmental Prize, which recognizes grass-roots environmental activists.

The two women will share a US$125,000 award, and said in an interview they planned to use it to establish their own award in India to recognize individuals who fight corporate crime.

Bee and Shukla, who lived within miles of the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, were recognized for organizing a global hunger strike to help sustain international awareness of the lingering effects of the disaster, and for fighting to get Dow Chemical to pay for ongoing medical care of the survivors and their children, as well as environmental cleanup.

Union Carbide became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow Chemical in 1999, 15 years after the disastrous gas leak.

"The whole world wept, but then people forgot about Bhopal," Bee said. She and Shukla said they both suffer multiple health problems including headaches, shortness of breath, burning sensations, insomnia and bone pain.

In an interview with Reuters, Bee recalled the horrifying winter night 20 years ago when she woke to the sound of her nephew coughing and was surrounded by a toxic cloud.

"All of us started coughing," she said. "It was as though our lungs were on fire. We started running and I had to pry my eyes open to see. I saw mothers running and leaving their children behind, people coughing up blood and (excrement) running down their legs."

In addition to their own health problems, Bee and Shukla said the community near Bhopal continues to see elevated rates of cancer, anemia, and that women show high concentrations of toxins in their breast milk.

"You can imagine the health of people who begin life with poisoned milk," said Bee.

The two women said their efforts have helped persuade the Indian government to pursue criminal charges against former Union Carbide chairman Warren Anderson, who is now retired in New York state.

They continue to seek more monetary damages from Dow Chemical. Under terms of an original settlement, survivors received about US$500 while relatives of those killed got about $2,000, they said.

A spokeswoman for Dow Chemical said it had no involvement in the Bhopal tragedy and considered the original terms of the settlement between Union Carbide and the victims to be final.

Other winners of the 2004 Goldman Environmental Prize include Margie Richard, who successfully led a campaign to get Royal Dutch/Shell to pay for the relocation of people living near a Shell Chemical plant in Norco, Louisiana.

In Africa, the prize was awarded to Rudolf Amenga-Etego of Ghana, who worked to suspend a water privatization project that would have limited access to clean drinking water.

South American social worker Libia Grueso Castelblanco won for securing 2.4 million hectares in territorial rights for rural communities in Colombia, where armed conflict and aggressive development have displaced many people.

In Europe, Manana Kochladze won for fighting a multi- corporation plan to build the world's largest oil pipeline through Georgia. His work won concessions to protect villagers and forced a larger examination of the project's environmental and health impact.