pyotra:Photos from the women-led demonstrations against U.S. multinational Union Carbide after the B
pyotra:Photos from the women-led demonstrations against U.S. multinational Union Carbide after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy of 1984.Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (Organization of Bhopal Women Worker Victims) demonstrating against the Supreme Court’s upholding of the government’s settlement plan with Union Carbide.“Union Carbide, quit India, quit the world”, Bhopal, 1985.Bhopal activists leaving police station, Bhopal, 1985.Bhopal victims demonstrating outside collectorate, demanding relief, 1985.Janwadi Mahila Samiti demonstration against Union Carbide, Delhi, 1985. Radha Kumar, “The Struggle for a Safe Environment” in The History of Doing (1993):While there is a long history of rural women’s environmental activism, tied to scarcity of fuel, water and fodder, the Bhopal disaster of 1984 saw the rise of a massive movement of women gas victims. On the night of 2-3 December 1984, over 20 tons of methyl isocyanate (MIC) exploded out of the pesticides plant in Bhopal, owned by U.S. multinational Union Carbide. Several thousand were killed on that night, and thousands have died as a result of exposure since. The official toll today is over 4,000 dead and around 500,000 potentially injured. Known as ‘killer in the night’, because it escaped in the early hours of the morning, and because it is odorless and invisible, the gas is estimated to have spread over almost the entire old city of Bhopal, which was the most densely populated and poorer part of the city. The worst affected areas were the shantytowns and slums adjacent to the factory, whose inhabitants worked as cheap daily labor. […] From the very start it was women gas victims who were most active in campaigns for relief, medical aid, and information. In the initial years, the ratio of women to men in demonstrations was something like 60:40, but as the years passed this ratio grew to 80:20, even 90:10. One of the reasons advanced was that sooner rather than later men had to find work, but women, as housewives, had more time–at any rate, their time was more flexible. While there is some truth to this argument, it has only limited validity. A large number of the women gas victims were themselves workers; many of them became after the disaster, the sole supporters of their families. Further, the organization of gas victims which emerged as chief campaigner from 1986 on was an organization of women gas victims who were employed in the sewing centres which were opened by the government as rehabilitatory training. The centres were opened in 1985 and gave training to roughly 2,000 women; one year later the government announced that they were going to close the centres down. In protest the women occupied the centres; the protest lasted well over a month, and out of it emerged the Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila Udyog Sangathan (the Bhopal working women gas victims organization). From a campaign to ensure the continuation of employment, the organization took on local campaigns for relief and rehabilitation for all gas victims, and then went on to approach the Court for relief. When in 1989, the government of India arrived at a shameful settlement with union carbide under the aegis of the Supreme Court, the Sangathan launched a massive campaign against the settlement, adopting a multipronged strategy of demonstrations, litigation, publicity and lobbying. -- source link