[Previous entry: "Global warming sparks a scramble for black gold under retreating ice"] [Next entry: "Fallout: the human cost of nuclear catastrophe"]
04/18/2006:
"Bhopal hunger strikers win clean-up fight"
Survivors of the Bhopal disaster called off a week-long hunger strike last night after India's prime minister promised to clean up the disused chemical factory, provide fresh drinking water for local people and build a £13m memorial to the dead.A leak of lethal methyl isocyanate gas from a pesticide plant operated by the Indian arm of the US firm Union Carbide killed more than 3,500 people in the central city of Bhopal in December 1984. At least 15,000 others have died since from cancer and other diseases, and deformed children have been born to survivors.
Despite compensation schemes, campaigners say the toll continues to rise as people living near the derelict plant drink water poisoned by toxic waste still present on the site. They want a piped water supply installed for families living nearby. Two years ago a study found contamination in water around the plant 500 times higher than the maximum recommended by the World Health Organisation.
For more than 20 years, victims have been fighting with little success to get the site cleaned up. This year, to highlight their struggle, a group of 40 campaigners and survivors spent 33 days walking the 500 miles from Bhopal to New Delhi, arriving late last month.
guardian.co.uk
