TriNetre - Archive for December 02, 2004
(no longer updated)
As have been shown several times, vigilante justice will get you nowhere!
Shortly after midnight on December 3 1984, forty tons of highly toxic methyl isocyanate was accidentally released from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the heart of the city of Bhopal, India.
Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets. Even far from the factory, near the lake, at Rani Hira Pati ka Mahal the ground was so thick with dead that you could not avoid treading on them. (Source - bhopal.org)
The report from London-based Amnesty International said "new research" revealed that more than 7,000 people had died immediately after the gas leak, while a further 15,000 people had died of related diseases since 1984. (Source - BBC)
While Union Carbide settled a civil suit in 1989 by agreeing to pay victims a lump sum of $470 million, a criminal trial against the company and its top officials is entering its 15th year, with less than half of the few hundred witnesses having testified. And the compensation process has taken so long that the settlement fund has nearly doubled in value; Officials haven't decided how to dole out nearly $333 million in unplanned interest. - (Source - Christian Science Monitor)
Dismissing the lawsuit against Union Carbide and its former chief executive for damages, a New York federal judge said:
"Union Carbide has met its obligations to clean up the contamination in or near the Bhopal plant," US District Judge John F Keenan said.
"Having sold their shares long ago and having no connection to or authority over the plaint, they cannot be held responsible at this time," he added. (Source - BBC)
The photo © Pablo Bartholomew
