Editorial, 'AN INTERNATIONAL TRAGEDY', in 15 June 2010 issue of LAW ANIMATED WORLD

AN INTERNATIONAL TRAGEDY

That is what we would call the world’s worst industrial disaster in Bhopal which caused untold and irremediable agony and loss to the people and environment about 3 decades ago. A mere two-year sentence to a few lower level officers of the corporate entity after a prolonged trial, which was from inception watered down by high executive and judicial intervention, is nothing but adding insult to injury – a slap on the face of the world community because more disturbing questions than have been looked into presently are involved in the process. First of all how come the killer chemical weapon – Phosgene – was so shockingly neglected by one and all? The very presence of this toxic chemical, a poison gas banned since the first world war and now scheduled in the International Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Convention, should have raised many an eyebrow and caused a feverish search for fixing various international criminal liabilities on the Union Carbide Corporation. Was the criminal negligence confined to the prevention stage alone when none of the UCIL managers/staff, including its chair-butcher Warren Anderson, demonstrated an iota of firefighting responsibility but hid the crucial information about the fatal fluid cocktail so essential for prompt and correct medical treatment to victims that could have saved thousands of lives? Was not the US Government itself liable for trying at every step to exculpate the corporate officials instead of itself prosecuting them for this crime against humanity – Obama, now crying so hoarse against the BP for the Gulf oil spill, should be able to, and made to, answer better. Then, is it not the responsibility of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to take this up suo motu as a shocking and peculiar case of ‘industrial genocide’ and secure strict punishments for all the guilty to at least appease the tormented conscience of the world humans? Finally, would not the victims and especially the poor in India be compensated reasonably and liberally? This is in no way to minimize or cover up the criminal commissions/omissions of our own governments and persons-in-the-high in this process but only to point out the necessities and possibilities for an international intervention to save humanity from such corporate cannibalism §§§