Republished from Cafedissensus Blog

Bhopal Gas Tragedy: A terrifying legacy still awaits those babies

By Abdul Hafees

Note: This feature story was written after attending a protest by the Bhopal Gas Tragedy victims, who had assembled at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on 10 November, 2014 and appealed to the government for a hike in compensation. And the protest was part of a month-long strike ahead of the anniversary of the disaster on 2 and 3 December.

Even after three decades, a nightmare haunts them across generations. They are still gripped by the horror of that night. The tragedy of the night has resulted in endless sleepless hours. What makes them edgy is that their children born after the disaster do not know the terrifying legacy that awaits them. While revisiting the dreadful memories after thirty long years, they seem not to have recovered from those panic-stricken moments as the scars re-erupt in the form of deep trauma.

Bhopal gas tragedy, which is referred to as ‘the world’s most devastating industrial disaster,’ had rendered nearly four thousand dead and thousands of inhabitants physically disabled, as per official estimates. Unofficially it was found that around ten thousand people had died. The disaster had occurred on the intervening night of 2 and 3 December, 1984. The Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), a giant pesticide plant in the country, witnessed a leakage of a toxic chemical gas, methyl isocyanate (MIC). While the people who lived nearby often looked at the plant with awe and some of them earned their livelihood there, they had never speculated that the chemicals produced there could end their lives one day.

Still traumatized by the incident that snuffed out their dreams, some of the survivors had gathered at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, about a month ago with placards in their hands and fire in the hearts. Many of them were old women. Five young women were observing indefinite waterless strike. As a result of the protests and timely intervention of the Amnesty International, the government further hiked the proposed compensation a little. After a settlement with the UCIL in 1989, the government paid atotal amount of rupees 3842 crore to 5.74 lakh victims. After the revised estimate was approved, a group of ministers also sanctioned a hike in the redressal. Although the government had then filed for another 7786 crore, the case is still pending in the Supreme Court.

It is believed that if the authorities had tried to make them aware of the precautionary measures to be adopted in case of a crisis, the worst disaster could have been avoided. The U.S Company UCIL, which is accountable for the disaster, renamed Dow Chemicals now, has built a hospital in the same locality to treat the affected people. Warren Anderson, the then Union Carbide chairman, who died a month ago, was declared a fugitive and an absconder after the Indian government made several attempts to extradite him but he never appeared before the court. The company appeared completely indifferent to the fact that they have ruined the future of generations to come.

The victims along with their children still suffer from chronic diseases which can never be cured. “Over the past years, we witnessed only one change that was the closure of the factory; nothing else has changed. We still encounter problems of water intoxication, respiratory and, numerous other diseases,” says Sayeda Bi, a victim of the disaster, who lost some of her family members in the tragedy. Though health surveys were conducted along the site of the disaster by the concerned departments and organizations, no remedial measures were taken to purify the contaminated water and resolve other environmental issues.

After three decades of struggle, these people have nothing to lose. Some lost their breadwinners; some lost their future promises. A year ago, thedoctors observed that “the probability of a baby being born with congenital anomalies is seven times higher in the disaster affected areas. The effect is evident even in the third generation.” There are around1,000 children born with defects as a result of the disaster. Many of them would never enjoy a childhood and go to school because some of them experience acute breathing problems and suffer from physical disabilities.

Thirty years on, the victims of one of the worst disasters the world has ever seen are still living on the edge thinking of the ordeal that await their children.

Author:

Abdul Hafees is studying journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, New Delhi.

Republished from Cafedissensus Blog
Reyhaneh Jabbari: How media underplayed the story

Reyhaneh Jabbari: How media underplayed the story

By Abdul Hafees

When the media outlets labeled the stance taken by the Iranian government to execute a 26-year-old Iranian woman named, Reyhaneh Jabbari, as one of the many draconian laws of a fundamentalist Islamic Republic, the former judge of this case, Justice Hassan Tardast’s interview with Iran’s Entekhab before the hanging points to some crucial elements in the case, which were underplayed by the international media. (Entekhab somehow removed this interview later from their website, but it was reproduced on other news websites).

It was 2009. Reyhaneh was a 19-year-old interior designer. Sarbandi Abdolali Murtaza, a former member of the Iranian Intelligence Services and a physician, approached her with the promise of a job as part of his office renovation. He picked her up in his car to show his office. On the way, he went to a pharmacy and bought some medicines. And when they reached his apartment, it was reported that he locked the door. Then Sarbandi tried to sexually assault her and Reyhaneh stabbed him using her knife as a self-defense. She was sentenced to death by a criminal court in Tehran in the same year. After a long span of seven years in prison, she was hanged on Friday, October 24, 2014.

Justice Hassan Tardast said that this case was scrutinized and inspected very sensibly by five judges because of its exclusivity. And the twenty-four page verdict was cross-checked by thirteen Supreme Court judges. They unanimously approved the verdict. The court regularly kept in touch with the family of the murdered person and asked them to forgive her. Even though they were ready to grant her apology, they changed their decision when Reyhaneh called their father a ‘rapist’.

According to Justice Tardast, Reyhaneh confessed in the court that she had decided to murder Sarbandi long before the incident. As per the investigation report, Tardast also pointed out that she had sent an SMS to one of her boyfriends in which she mentioned that she would kill someone. Reyhaneh herself admitted in the court that she had also planned to kill her own father for misbehaving with her.

As per her account in the court records, she argued that the door was locked and she somehow managed to escape from the apartment. When the police found out that the door wasn’t locked, they quizzed her further. She changed her version, acknowledging that the door was open. She also said that Mr. Sarbandi had thrown a chair at her after he was stabbed. When she was running away taking the elevator, he tried to chase her taking the stairs. When he reached the second floor, he died.Justice Tardast recalled Reyhaneh saying, “I hid in the street, and waited. When I saw the ambulance and the police, I took a taxi home.”

This apartment has five floors. Even if she cried for help, the neighbors would have definitely heard her. The question arises: why didn’t she shout while she was being raped? The neighbors told the investigation team that the only sound they heard was the noise of a chair thrown somewhere onto the wall.

As mentioned earlier, she was only 19 at the time of the incident and must be considered a fresher in interior designing without any experience. Then why did Mr. Sarbandi choose an inexperienced interior designer as an employee in a country where many other established interior designers are available? Was this only a formal relation between the two?

 “I used to give him services in return for benefits,” she said in the court three times, as Justice Tardast mentioned in the interview. He also saidthat the investigation team found SMSs sent from her mobile phone. These messages revealed that she was in physical relationships with her fiancé, a manager for whom she worked, and some other boyfriends for a long time. “You said goodbye to me when you started sleeping with…dirt. This was my last SMS to you,” was one of the SMSs sent by her fiancé after a dispute between them.

When she was asked how she came to know Mr. Sarbandi, the Iranian woman said that they first met on the way and he picked her up in his Camri car. That’s when they exchanged contact numbers. But after a probe was made into the SMSs sent between the two, it was found that they were in contact a week before he was murdered. Mr. Sarbandi had also picked her up on the very day he was murdered. She got in his car, her friends told, and she lied to them that he was her father’s friend.

Mr. Sarbandi, a physician, dealt in medical instruments. He visited the EU countries regularly for this purpose. In the same interview Justice Tardast explains that he promised her that he would take her with him next time. He didn’t keep his promise. As a result, Reyhaneh was angry with him. Also she had asked him for his car for a picnic with her friends but he didn’t agree. This might be the motif that finally culminated in the murder. ‘I will kill him’, was the SMS she had sent her boyfriend the day before the incident. Next day, when she went to his apartment, he demanded her to take off her scarf. But she refused. Then he went to offer prayer. It appears that Reyhaneh came after him and stabbed with a knife from behind. This is the story told by Reyhaneh in the court.

The investigation team acknowledged her account because they had found blood stains on the bedsheet, where he was offering the prayer. Moreover, he was stabbed from the back side and the injuries were also on his back.  Corroborating her account in the court earlier, the investigation team also found that he had bought the medicine, Difinoxilat, and some condoms from a pharmacy. But those condoms were rediscovered by the team from the table in the same room.

Reyhaneh had confessed that a third person was with them at the time of the murder but she never revealed his name. What was his role in this murder?

Justice Tardast further revealed that after a strong appeal of the Supreme Court to the family of Mr. Sarbandi to pardon Reyhaneh, they approached her. They asked her two questions: Who was the third person present? Why did she murder Mr. Sarbandi?

Both remain still unanswered.

“Iranian woman hanged for killing rapist for self-defense,” screamed most of the headlines. Quite interestingly, no one covered an objective, unbiased and two-sided crime report in this case.

Photo-credit: Here

Author:

Abdul Hafees is studying journalism at the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, New Delhi.

‘Reframing NREGA a criminal neglect’

Abdul Hafees

27/10/2014

New Delhi: Seminar held at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi strongly condemned the attempts made by the Modi-government to reframe the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The new decision would only reduce its benefits and render people workless, said Nikhil De, social activist based in Delhi.

“The people who are below the poverty line who hardly get jobs in its primary stage receive only a minimum wage with no increment thereafter,” says De. “However, those, above the line lacking the basic livelihood means living in rural areas also feel they are neglected from the employment scheme whereas the government is not concerned about their situations as well,” he accused.

The NREGA employment scheme was passed in 2005 when the first UPA government was in power. The well-appreciated employment scheme, aimed at boosting “the livelihood security by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural house,” have further received much criticism for various forms of corruptions in a couple of states so far.

Nithin Ghadkari, Minister for Rural Development, had announced before that the government would consider revising the NREGA by limiting the number of its beneficiary villages from 645 to 200, and saving the required revenue for the machinery in terms of the work that has been done by employees, to stop the exploitation in this scheme’

“Minimising its beneficiaries is not the way to end corruption. It is a criminal neglect towards the work rights of the poor and destitute people, De added. The government should streamline the programme taking cognizant of the basic living means of the backward people living in remote areas,” De argued. “And the proceedings should be frequently verified in order to make it scam-free and ensure its expected outcome in different states of the country,” he added.

 De also asked why some senior journalists are in a hurry to jot down the impact of this scheme to a great extent, while at the same time they ignore the ample irregularities piled upon it.

Inside those four painting-packed walls

Can you imagine some students lodging string of protests against a prime ministerial candidate in the highways of his own constituency packed with his strong supporters? Yeah!. It was what some students from Jawaharlal Nehru University did while the BJP national council announced the prime ministerial candidature of Modi who is allegedly responsible for the communal violence happened in a state wherein he was the CM before.

Holding the intellectual ideology unto its chest and boasting of its inherited left-leaned politics; JNU draws the attention of every countryman who is eager to listen to the electoral response and ideological discourses in this campus as it could cast its shadow also all over the national politics. This ideological dissimilarity has transformed this campus to be hectic with intellectual discourses over every issue nationally and internationally controversial.

One should wonder for a while if one comes to see the students here in this campus announce their messages and ask for votes at the time of election being joyously playing drums and holding bombardments of debates with their “rivals”. Here in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) campus, things are like these for many years; elections have always been creating a tumultuous atmosphere of slogans but the commotion never steps up to be violent.

What makes the JNUSU (Jawahar Lal Nehru Students Union) election different is that party activists are shuttling to and fro to circulate the pamphlets prepared by them not only over those issues that arise inside the four painting-packed walls of the campus but also regarding every socio-political concerns of the whole country. And the students initiate many social welfare works across the states in India, like the recently collected relief funds from the campus and outside for the J&K flood victims.

JNU’s this year election battle was getting hot with moves afoot by students' fronts of every national political party to wage a war. And they all are well aware of the political situation in the country as the previous Loksabha poll was reflected the Modi wave across the country, and the government was then just completed its hundred days being waded through a quagmire of communal polarisation.

The pamphlets distributed here through the mess, garden and the passages also play a vital role to make the policy announcements for the parties, which dealt this time with the issues like the lack of hostel facility, anti-GSCASH movement, democratic higher education, students’ scholarships, and move against the administration. Meanwhile, the national issues debated over here were the Modi-government reforms and communal violence followed in some states.

When the results came out, the JNUSU opted to remain for one more year with the All India Students’ Association (AISA), under the Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist. AISA. It won all four posts in these union elections. Ashithosh Kumar, was elected as the president of the JNUSU, Anant Prakash Narayan the Vice-president, Chintu Kumari the general secretery, and Shafqat Hussain the joint secretary.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), a party that had never been in the fray of central panel elections until now, took surprising second seat in two. Student Federation of India (SFI), under the Communist Party of India-Marxist, couldn’t “recover its lost charisma followed some issues”. The SFI activists admit the failure was “due to a split within the party”. The split in the party had triggered a breakaway wing and they stood under a new umbrella named LPF comprising the All India students Federation (AISF) of the CPI and the Democratic Students Federation (DSF).National Students Union of India (NSUI) of the Congress also called by the students an “election party” for it was seen only at the time of election, tasted a grim failure “as usual”, prompted Saidalavi, phd candidate in Arabic.

The newly elected president Ashithosh Kumar said that the cradle of the leftist ideologies, JNU, has been left-leaned all the time. the other defeated parties were only for pursuing an opportunist ideological- political line. AISA believes, that 'the religion should be separated from politics as it is a personal concern'. he added. 'We have always kept our ideology and never deviated for the time being like all other parties did', Ashithosh claimed.