India to protest Dow Olympic sponsorship
15 year old Sachin Kumar washes himself at his home located in a slum near the site of the deserted Union Carbide factory on November 30, 2009 in Bhopal, India. Twenty-five years after an explosion causing a mass gas leak, in the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, killed at least eight thousand people, toxic material from the ‘biggest industrial disaster in history’ continues to affect Bhopalis. Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide in 1999.
After Indian athletes threatened, and then ruled out, a boycott of the London Olympics, the Indian government has raised the issue of Dow Chemical's sponsorship of the event with organizers, the Economic Times reports.
Many Indians continue to blame Dow Chemical for the delayed cleanup of the site of the Bhopal gas disaster, and the low compensation paid to victims, following the company's acquisition of Union Carbide.
"We have written a letter to the IOA (Indian Olympic Association), asking them to take up the matter with the organisers of the London Olympics," a spokesman for India's sports ministry told Reuters.
Prior to its sale to Dow, Union Carbide settled its liabilities for the gas leak at its Bhopal pesticide factory with the Indian government, paying $470 million to victims in 1989.
The Indian government last year demanded more than $1 billion additional compensation for the victims of the gas leak from Dow Chemical, the paper said.
Activists say 25,000 people died in the immediate aftermath of the accident and in ensuing years, and about 100,000 people who were exposed to the gas continue to suffer today from ailments that range from cancer, blindness to birth defects.
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