December, 02 2011, 11:52am EDT
London 2012 Organizers Must Not Forget Bhopal Disaster, Says Amnesty International
WASHINGTON
Amnesty International has urged London's Olympic organizers not to forget the victims of the Bhopal disaster as they award a lucrative contract for the Games to the Dow Chemical Company.
Dow owns Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the company that held a majority share in the Indian subsidiary that owned and operated the UCC plant responsible for the 1984 gas leak disaster, which killed thousands of people 27 years ago today.
Dow is due to provide a plastic wrap that will encircle the London 2012 Olympic Stadium during the Games, despite concerns about its human rights record.
"The awarding of this contract to Dow is an insult to the victims of the Bhopal disaster, whose suffering continues till this day," said Seema Joshi, Amnesty International's head of business and human rights.
Lord Sebastian Coe, chairman of The London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), last week wrote a letter to Amnesty International dismissing human rights concerns about Dow.
Dow says it has no responsibility for the leak and its consequences, despite the fact UCC became a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow in 2001.
UCC continued to be a separate legal entity but its corporate identity and all of its business is fully integrated with that of Dow.
"For LOCOG to publicly state that Dow has no responsibility for what happened in Bhopal is irresponsible given ongoing legal calls for justice and the fact that it has not consulted interested groups directly," said Joshi. "We cannot allow corporate actors to turn a blind eye as to what continues to happen in relation to Bhopal."
Corporate interest, legal complexity and government failures and neglect have proved huge obstacles to justice for the people of Bhopal.
Bhopal's massive gas leak in December 1984 killed between 7,000 and 10,000 people in its immediate aftermath, and a further 15,000 over the next 20 years.
More than 100,000 continue to suffer from serious health problems as a result of the leak, while toxic waste at the plant site is yet to be fully cleaned.
UCC continues to defy Indian jurisdiction, failing to abide by repeated summons to appear before a Bhopal court.
"LOCOG should publicly state that ongoing human rights concerns were not considered prior to the contract being given to the Dow Chemical Company and that they made a mistake," said Joshi.
Amnesty International is a global movement of millions of people demanding human rights for all people - no matter who they are or where they are. We are the world's largest grassroots human rights organization.
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Progressives Decry Repression of Student Protests on Kent State Massacre Anniversary
"The militarized repression of young people speaking out against a terrible war was shameful then and it's shameful now," said one state lawmaker.
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As U.S. Republicans push for the deployment of National Guard troops to quell nationwide student demonstrations against the Gaza genocide, progressive lawmakers marked the anniversary of the 1970 Kent State Massacre by condemning police repression of peaceful protesters and reaffirming the power of dissent.
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On May 4, 1970, 28 Ohio National Guard troops fired 67 live rounds into a crowd of unarmed Kent State students rallying against the expansion of the U.S.-led war in Vietnam into Cambodia. They murdered students Allison Krause, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder—all aged 19 or 20. Nine other students were wounded, including one who was permanently paralyzed.
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Eleven days after Kent State, police opened fire on a crowd of Black students protesting the bombing of Cambodia at Jackson State College in Jackson, Mississippi, killing Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green and injuring 12 others.
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UN World Food Program @WFPChief: “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north of Gaza, and it’s moving its way south.”
pic.twitter.com/eyk0OeOEzr
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Republican Georgia Congressman Mike Collins came under fire Friday over a social media post applauding video of white University of Mississippi students racially abusing a Black woman participating in a campus protest for Palestine.
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Collins—or whoever's in charge of his social media accounts—sparred with Black leaders who called out his racism. When former Democratic Ohio state senator Nina Turner said the video showed "anti-Blackness," the congressman shot back, "*Anti-terroristness."
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