Bhopal disaster culprits given slap on wrist

Twenty-six years ago, the worst industrial catastrophe in history occurred in Bhopal, India.

When 40 tons of methyl isocyanate, a poisonous gas, leaked from a tank in a U.S.-owned Union Carbide plant on Dec. 3, 1984, 3,000 people died instantly, mostly children and the elderly. Thousands more died later or suffered terrible injuries. More than 500,000 people were affected, nearly all working and poor people, who lived in the heavily populated, impoverished neighborhoods surrounding the pesticide factory.

Survivors, their families and advocates have fought for justice for more than 25 years. On June 7, an Indian court finally found eight former officials at the corporation’s Indian subsidiary guilty of negligence, the original charge of “culpable homicide” having been reduced earlier. The seven who are still living were each sentenced to only two years in prison and fined $2,000. The short sentences have enraged activists and family members of the injured and deceased.

The chief culprit, former Union Carbide Chairperson Warren M. Anderson, has never taken any responsibility and has evaded extradition from the U.S. and prosecution.

To this day the toxins are causing ailments that afflict Bhopal’s residents. There are still 425 tons of hazardous waste sitting in a warehouse at the accident’s site. Pesticide residue has seeped into the soil and water, contaminating the community’s drinking water, gardens and more.

Community activists, health organizations and environmentalists are among the many forces that have been mobilizing and pressuring Dow Chemical Company, which purchased Union Carbide in 2001, and their government to remove the hazardous waste. Yet nothing has been done.

Capitalist greed knows no bounds. In pursuit of megaprofits, the superrich corporations seek to ravage the earth with impunity, destroying villages and resources and causing massive deaths and injuries in their wake. There is nothing they won’t do in their quest for the almighty dollar — or euro.

The people of Bhopal deserve justice. Moreover, the world’s peoples deserve and need an economic system that would take every precaution to prevent industrial accidents, one that organizes production for human need, not profits, and one that puts their health and that of all life — including that of the planet itself — as the top priority.

That system is socialism.