ON 2 DECEMBER 2011, the 27th anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster, victims’ rights activists in Bhopal prepared to burn effigies, as they do each year. This time around, they built “a huge multi-headed Olympic monster”, recalled activist Colin Toogood.
Since the announcement of their official corporate sponsorship of the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the Dow Chemical Company’s relationship to the Bhopal disaster, considered the worst industrial disaster in history, has become the subject of increased public scrutiny. Last summer, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) announced a controversial deal it had signed with Dow, wherein the corporation will provide and pay for a 900 metre-long fabric wrap (estimated price: £7,000,000) that will surround the Olympic Stadium—the stadium that hosts not only the 2012 Olympic Games, but also the Paralympics, a month later. “And given Dow’s connection not to just Bhopal but to Agent Orange, that’s outrageous,” Toogood said. “It’s a slap in the face to disabled people all over the world.”
Toogood had been a DJ in Shoreditch, London, for 10 years before he joined the Bhopal Medical Appeal (BMA), a British medical charity that funds survivors’ groups in Bhopal, after seeing a newspaper ad in 2008 for someone to manage publicity for the upcoming 25th anniversary of the disaster. “I was looking for something really different,” he explained. Ever since, he has been at the centre of the protests against Dow’s sponsorship.
As the activists in Bhopal were getting ready to light up their Olympic monster last December, Bhopal-based activist Satinath Sarangi sent Toogood the photographic evidence, and Toogood had another idea: “I think we should burn Lord Coe!” He was referring to LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe, the Olympic athlete turned Conservative politician, whom Toogod described as “very outspoken in his defense of Dow”.
“It got an astonishing amount of coverage, in pictures, videos, newspapers, websites, all over the world,” Toogood said. “He was personally very upset about his effigy being burned. And I must admit I did find that very amusing.”
Toogood has met Lord Coe just once, in Shoreditch, during a promotional tour of Max Carlson’s 2011 documentary Bhopali, which features Sanjay Verma, a Bhopal survivor who lost his parents and five of his siblings on the night of the disaster. Toogood was with Verma at the time, and got word that Coe had been spotted in a local restaurant, the Pitfield Café. They went to the café immediately and introduced themselves to Coe: “I’m Colin Toogood from the Bhopal Medical Appeal, and this is my friend Sanjay Verma from Bhopal!”
“And his face just dropped,” Toogood recalled. “He knew instantly he was in trouble.”
At the Pitfield Café, Verma confronted Coe about the fact that Dow has paid for Union Carbide’s asbestos liabilities in the US, but continues to insist that it bears no responsibility to pay compensation in Bhopal. “And he said it wasn’t true that Dow had compensated asbestosis victims,” Toogood said. (In January 2002, Dow did settle a Texas asbestos lawsuit originally filed against Union Carbide, which once mined and sold raw asbestos fibers.)
“I asked him whether he was aware that Dow had refused to answer a warrant to explain why they hadn’t produced Union Carbide to answer the criminal charges in India,” Toogood continued. “And he said that isn’t true.”
Toogood was incredulous. “And it is true!”
Despite Coe’s denials, the Olympic campaign has had a significant effect upon public opinion in London. As Toogood put it: “You can have a conversation with people now, and even though they don’t know much, because of the Olympics, they’ve picked up on Dow having some kind of link to Bhopal. They may not know much more than that, but that’s a whole lot more than they seemed to know three or four years ago.”
But the struggle to convince those in power continues. One of Coe’s aides, while trying to end the argument and leave the café, said to Toogood, “Lord Coe knows more about Bhopal than you do.”
As Coe walked past Toogood on his way out of the café, he hissed, “My grandmother was Indian.”
“That just has nothing to do with it,” Toogood told him, laughing.
“You could see what he’d like to have done was hit me,” Toogood said. “But his PA just ushered him away as he was fuming.”