I DID NOT SEE THE MAN WHO STRUCK ME. The police were kicking women, hitting really hard with thick sticks. People were crying and screaming. I was trying to get my children down the stairs and out of that place. The fist flew from nowhere into my eye. Such pain, I thought I’d gone blind. I was terrified for my children. When we got outside I sat down and thought, ‘My God, are we less than human that they treat us this way?’
Half a dozen people from Bhopal, India – including several victims of the world’s worst-ever industrial disaster – are on their sixth day of an indefinite hunger strike, demanding things like poison-free drinking water. If their government doesn’t take action, the Bhopalis - gassed by Union Carbide, poisoned by contaminated water, driven into destitution – may be forced to starve themselves to death.
Support the Bhopalis by participating in our free fax action NOW!!
(it only takes a moment)
Three hundred of us women had gone with our kids to see a high official of the local government. Our wells are poisoned by chemicals leaking from the Union Carbide factory. We have no other water at all, we can’t afford to buy it. We are all ill. Children’s skin erupts in boils. People’s bodies are filled with aches. Some get so giddy and breathless. Two doors from me is a man who has gone so anaemic he can hardly stand up. Many people are too sick to work. Neighbours help each other, but we are all of us rather poor people, rarely’s there anything to spare. A year ago thanks to a friendly lawyer, we petitioned the Supreme Court for help, The Supreme Court ordered the local authorities to supply us with clean drinking water. They simply ignored the order. More than a year has passed but next to nothing has been done. I wanted to say to this big official, ‘My daughter’s sick. Our water is poisoned. Why have you ignored the Supreme Court’s order? Why won’t you help us?’
We were told the man wasn’t there. Riot police came, carrying shields and thick sticks. They began beating us. They hit so hard that stick-shapes are bruised on people’s bodies. Our friend Rasheeda was honoured in front of the whole world when she won the Goldman Prize last year, they hit her on the head, her hair was full of blood. They had no pity even for the children. We’d taken them along so the authorities could see the little ones who all their lives have been drinking and washing in poison. My small two, aged 6 and 3 were crushed in the panic.
OUR WATER BEGAN STINKING years ago. It had a fiery taste, sometimes it was a browny colour. We told the authorities but nothing was done. The problem was the nearby Union Carbide factory. After that horrible night when the factory killed thousands, Carbide left without cleaning it. They left tons of chemicals. Far away in America, they denied they were poisoning our water. Their own company papers show that they knew otherwise. When they put fish in water from the factory, all the fish instantly died.
To this day if you go the factory you can see the poisons for yourself. In open warehouses children and animals leave footprints in chemical dust. Chemicals spilled from rotted tanks lies in piles of brown rocks. Since 1984 we’ve had 20 monsoons, three months of hard rain each year. The poisons wash deep into the soil, into the underground water, into our wells. In 1999 Greenpeace did tests and found that the water was full of poisons known to cause cancer and birth defects. Still the company and politicians wouldn’t help. A local government minister paid us a visit. In front of journalists he drank a glass of well water to prove that it was safe, but eyewitnesses saw him a minute later behind a building sticking two fingers down his throat. Since then the same poisons have been found in the breast milk of local women. Still nothing was done. We asked the Supreme Court to help, the rest you know.
SANNO SAID THAT THE WOMEN who were beaten for asking for their rights are poor. She did not tell you how poor––that to stave off hunger people will bind cloths round their bellies, or when their children cry from hunger give them water to fill their stomachs. Many lived in their houses long before Union Carbide built its factory nearby. They did not ask to be gassed on the night of horror, to watch their loved ones die, for their health to be ruined, then as if this weren’t bad enough, for Union Carbide to poison their water. They deserve better than company and politicians each cynically blaming the other, both getting away with doing nothing. Although Sanno told her story in 2005, the State Government of Madhya Pradesh continues to deny its citizens poison-free water two years later. Please don’t be one of those who just close their eyes. If the beating of innocent women disgusts you, and the poisoning of innocent children, do something about it.
If you want to join the Bhopalis in their demand for poison-free drinking water, medical care and social support, please send a free fax and urge your friends and family to do the same!
Daily blog posts from the action in Bhopal are available at http://www.bhopal.net/....
*All images are property of Students for Bhopal | International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal and can be used with attribution.