Dissident’s family demands his release

The family of Aron Atabek, a Kazakh poet, writer and opposition civil activist since Soviet times, is campaigning for his release from an 18-year jail sentence.
Atabek was convicted in 2007 of ‘orchestrating mass disorder’ after speaking up for shanty-town dwellers at Shanyrak outside Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. The city authorities, alarmed that a forthcoming change in the law that strengthened home ownership rights would afford the shanty-town more protection, ordered them to leave their homes.
Mass protests in defence of constitutional rights to a home turned into confrontations with the police. The shanty-town dwellers, fearing a violent assault by riot police, kidnapped an officer who was killed as the police moved in.
Atabek had spoken up for the shanty-town dwellers, tried to negotiate with authorities on their behalf and lobbied parliamentarians. His trumped-up conviction has been denounced by numerous campaign groups. He has vehemently refused the government’s offer of a pardon in exchange for admitting guilt.
Twenty-three other people also received heavy jail sentences.
In prison, Atabek has continued to write, detailing illegal and inhuman prison conditions. He has constantly faced restrictions on visiting rights, had manuscripts confiscated, been given spells in solitary confinement and had two years added to his sentence for refusing to wear prison uniform.
Atabek is a lifelong dissident. He took part in a student demonstration in Almaty in 1986, the violent dispersal of which helped to trigger the reform movement in Soviet Kazakhstan. He headed a ‘national patriotic’ political group that in the early post-Soviet years was suppressed by the government of Nursultan Nazarbayev – who remains president to this day.
Information and contact: www.aronatabek.com

Commuting in Kathmandu is difficult, at best. Taxis are extortionately priced, buses are overcrowded, and the city is big enough that walking is often impractical. Increasingly, people are turning to bicycles as a remedy. Proponents are now emphasising the positive effects of cycling in terms of ecology, Nepali independence and improving safety on the streets. It is a dangerous, yet remarkably political mode of transport.

Unlike campaign groups that focus on the macrocosm of global climate change, Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 focuses on the city itself. Member Shail Shrestha describes Kathmandu’s air as ‘unimaginably polluted’, but adds that this pollution is caused by those who can afford private transport, while those who can’t are affected most – witness for example the many Nepalis who live in shacks on the ring road, a highway that leaves passers-by coughing from the fumes of cars, buses and motorbikes.

Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 sees its campaign as rallying against social inequality. As another member, Rajan Kathet, says: ‘The “have nots” have always been victimised by the “haves”.’ Shrestha believes that Nepal can set an example for other countries to follow: ‘If a developing country does this [promotes cycling], it could be an example for countries that pollute.’

Nepal is currently in the midst of a fuel shortage. Schools, small businesses and organisations are struggling to get fuel for their vehicles. There are mile-long queues at every petrol station. Nepali independence activists claim that fuel dependency on neighbouring India is inhibiting progress in Nepal. The fuel shortage is caused, they claim, by deficit and corruption within the Nepal Oil Corporation, which is entirely dependent on the Indian Oil Corporation—to which it is in debt. In order to eradicate this debt, the Nepali Oil Corporation last week announced they would add 10 Rupees (approximately 9 pence) to every litre of fuel sold. Even in UK terms, this is no small amount. It would make fuel unaffordable for many Nepalis. Fortunately the decision was reversed following a Kathmandu-wide strike at the end of January, led by 13 of the city’s Students’ Unions.

Many social organisations in Nepal talk about ‘improving the country’ in terms of making it fuel-independent. The strike action only implies a general consensus that greater sovereignty would be beneficial. Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 is instead keen to ‘do action’. It deems cycling to be the best way to move away from fuel dependence. Indeed, in the context of a fuel shortage, cycling is being increasingly recognised as a cheap, accessible and non-polluting way to keep the city operating. Cycling in Kathmandu has become synonymous with freedom.

Yet safety remains a major concern. Just a few months ago, the revered wildlife conservationist, Dr Pralad Yonzon, was killed whilst cycling on the road in Kathmandu. Refusing to be scared off by the number of accidents, Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 held a rally to promote better visibility and to encourage more people to use bicycles instead of motorbikes.

Although bicycles are in fact generally safer than motorbikes in Kathmandu, they are seen as less fashionable among younger Nepalis. Shrestha explains that, ‘there is an idea that people who cycle are those who can’t afford [motor]bikes’. By highlighting the number of deaths on motorbikes compared to those on bicycles, the group are hoping to challenge this belief.

Promoting cycling on such dangerous streets is the first hurdle that the group have to overcome. On January 11, the group gained one of their first wins. Following extensive lobbying by activists, the government announced that they intend to build cycle lanes on all roads over 22 metres wide. Meanwhile the number of cyclists in Kathmandu has risen since the start of the campaign.

The group’s main aim is that Kathmandu becomes a bicycle-friendly city by 2020. Along the way, they are making a real difference to regular people’s lives and to Nepal as a whole. With advocates like Kathet and Shrestha, it won’t be long before more Kathmanduites will, as the group’s motto says, ‘ride with pride’.

Find out more on Kathmandu Cycle City 2020’s website.

The NGWF was founded in 1984. How has the union gone about improving the lives of garment workers?
Since 1984, the NGWF has been campaigning to ensure fair wages, equal rights, dignity and the empowerment of women garment workers. As well as organising workers in the factories into trade unions and factory committees, we have provided training and education, undertaken campaigning and lobbying in Bangladesh, and put pressure on garment factory owners, the government and multinationals. We have also won legal aid for victimised workers, as well as taking dispute resolutions through the established legal mechanisms. Mobilising solidarity between garment workers, retail workers and consumers in the North, and with trade unions in the South, has also been a priority.

What elements of the NGWF’s work proved most successful in winning the minimum wage increase?
The most important strategy has been organising the garment workers themselves. Since our inception, the NGWF has been organising garment workers to fight for their rights, establishing 1,000 factory committees and more than 30 factory-affiliated unions. We have also been coordinating and gathering support from other unions and labour rights organisations to increase the minimum wage and campaign for a living wage.
However, another strategy which has become increasingly important has been putting pressure on factory owners, the government and companies by ensuring that a fair price is paid for garments made in Bangladesh. International connections have been crucial here – with other unions in the sector, and with labour and human rights organisations. We have also lobbied democratic and leftist parties which stand for workers’ rights.

How has the involvement of women garment workers grown in significance over the NGWF’s lifespan?
First of all, 85 per cent of the three million workers in Bangladesh’s 4,500 garment factories are women. The garments those factories produce make up 70 per cent of the country’s total exports, yet the workers are highly exploited. The size of Bangladesh’s garment sector has grown significantly since the NGWF started, but the percentage of women workers has remained more or less the same. However, initially the percentage of women members in the NGWF was very low. Now our total membership exceeds 27,000, and more than 50 per cent are women.
Within the NGWF, the executive committee consists of 30 people, 17 of whom are women. Many of the leading positions, like vice-president, general secretary and treasurer, are held by women activists. In 1984, when we organised different types of demonstrations – rallies, meetings or protests – the number of women participating was low. Now, if you see a demonstration or a protest, the majority, probably around 80 per cent in fact, are women activists.
The third thing to say is that in 1984 the participation of women activists was met with negative comments by society in general. ‘You are women, you are in a job, you are getting money and yet you are protesting,’ they would say. Nowadays, these types of negative comments are not heard. In fact, the same type of people who were disparaging before are now clapping when there is a big demonstration of women workers. Finally, in 1984 there were lots of barriers imposed on women workers by their families – their fathers, brothers, husbands and mothers. Although this type of barrier still exists, it is not like before.

What are the barriers to organising garment workers?
There are lots. The legal system is the main one. The Bangladeshi government has ratified ILO Conventions 87 and 98 [guaranteeing freedom of association and collective bargaining]. However, according to the 2006 Bangladesh Labour Law, to be able to organise a union you need at least 30 per cent of the factory workforce. Secondly, when the union activists gather 30 per cent of the workforce, the union list is disclosed to the factory owner before registration with the labour ministry. Thirdly, other provisions in the labour law allow employers to dismiss staff when they are seen organising other workers; and often when factory workers organise, managers simply close down the factory. Nothing in the law can protect the workers from this. So there’s a lack of protection for workers organising unions.
Besides the legal barriers, many of the owners of garment factories are civil servants and members of parliament. In fact, it is estimated that nearly 100 out of 300 MPs are directly or indirectly involved in the garment business. MPs have a lot of influence in all government bodies – police, inspectors and the law enforcement departments. The law is in favour of businesspeople and not garment workers.
Then there are issues around organising the workers themselves. Most come from marginalised communities. They are from rural areas, so aren’t accustomed to urban life and their educational background is poor. Bangladesh is a male-dominated society – women are treated as second-class citizens. In the organising process women face a lot of prejudice from their families and from society as a whole when they engage with trade unions. This is why rights awareness education and campaigning is very important.

What are the most urgent campaigns and actions in this coming year?
There are several campaigns going on. Many people in the UK know that we managed to win an 80 per cent wage increase for the lowest paid jobs in the factories. This was agreed by tripartite negotiation and confirmed by the government, but it is yet to be fully implemented. In many countries of the global South, especially Bangladesh, the level of implementation is very low. The ratification and implementation of many international conventions is also lacking; the same can be said of the 2006 Bangladesh Labour Law. The minimum wage would not have been increased without the NGWF. So our current campaigns focus on the implementation of the new minimum wage and on improving health and safety conditions at the workplace to avoid factory fires and workers’ deaths.

If people in the UK want to show solidarity with Bangladeshi garment workers, should they be boycotting multinationals that source clothes from factories with poor working conditions?
I don’t think boycotting is the right way. If consumers want to show solidarity with the garment workers who produce their clothes, they should put pressure on the multinational companies that source from Bangladesh and other developing countries to ensure they respect workers’ rights and pay a fair price for the clothes they buy. Putting pressure on governments in the North also has an important role to play in making multinationals responsible for their business practices in the developing world.

Laia Blanch is War on Want’s international programmes officer on sweatshops and plantations

What precipitated his resignation was the humiliating U-turn on an election promise to move a major US base out of Okinawa. Hatoyama procrastinated for months as his decision over the base would either undermine Japan’s traditional subservient relationship with Washington and the Pentagon – with fierce pressure from Obama and Clinton – or break up his coalition government.

Now his successor Naoto Kan – admittedly enjoying a brief electoral honeymoon -has to hold together his three-party coalition, get government business through in the Upper House and keep DPJ MPs, elected from Okinawa, like Shokichi Kina (rock singer turned politician) on board.

Mizuho Fukushima, the Japanese Social Democratic Party (SDPJ) leader and consumer affairs minister, has already resigned from the Cabinet saying she could ‘not betray the Okinawans’. While the People’s New Party (PNP), Shizuka Kamei has also resigned, consequent to the decision to push ahead with the Upper House elections on 11 July and disagreement over post office privatisation – but for the moment the PNP remains part of the coalition.

Earlier in the year these elections looked merely unfinished business left over from last September’s victory inevitably securing the DPJ a clear majority without their two coalition partners. Now all bets are off. Even before the final decision on Okinawa, Hatoyama’s dithering had cost him dear with 73 per cent public dissatisfaction at his handling of the affair.

The DPJ’s election last September saw the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) out of office for the first time – save for a twelve month period – in well over half a century. Few outside of Japan would have imagined that, with a global financial crisis, an economy (some say, in a similar state to Greece) and another security crisis on the Korean Peninsula, it could be something so prosaic that would threaten the future stability of the government.

Ostensibly the issue was the future deployment of a single US military facility in Okinawa. In reality there were much more significant security and trade issues riding on the decision. Hatoyama has promised to devolve power to the regions and local governments, and to build a new relationship with his neighbours in the region. Both would see a Japan not without America, but with less America – and Tokyo in future on top, not on tap in the security relationship with Washington. Yet he handed Washington a stick to beat him with.

Security and trade issues

The DPJ’s economic priority was – and is – to negotiate a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the US. But Washington already has the Korea-US FTA, agreed back in June 2007, mouldering on the hill as the perceived threat to the US automotive industry makes early progress extremely unlikely. A US-Japan FTA would require much heavy lifting by the president that in the current climate he may not be capable of, but certainly without a compliant Japan he would not even attempt.

Since Japan’s surrender in August 1945, the US has utilised the prefecture of Okinawa – a 1000 km string of hundreds of islands between the south of Kyushu and Taiwan – to house one of the three or four sets of bases that allow it to project its military power globally. Despite that Okinawa, the smallest and poorest of Japan’s Prefectures (comprising less than 1 per cent of Japan’s land area), has had more that 50 per cent of the US military in Japan deployed on its territory – and in a particularly obtrusive way – taking up 20 per cent of Okinawa’s land area and 40 per cent of its arable land.

The base in question is the US Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma, on the main island of the chain, in the middle of Ginowan City. Futenma was the base for many of the operations against Iraq and now Afghanistan. It was agreed initially (1995) to move it to an offshore facility near Henoko (in the north of the island) – an agreement subsequently amended in 2005 to make Henoko an offshore extension of Camp Schwab in the same area. Both plans involve building over coral reefs, across sea grass beds and devastating the habitat of a rare species of dudong.

Local tensions and health concerns

The real problem is the people – the Okinawans don’t want the military bases, full stop. They have had enough. Demonstrations, protest camps outside the bases and land and sea campaigns are constant. The agreement to move Futenma in 1995 was triggered by a massive wave of protest, following the brutal rape of a twelve-year-old girl by three US servicemen, with anti-base demonstrations by up to 85,000 people – more than 10 per cent of the population.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the US and Japan grants ‘extraterritoriality’ to US soldiers, meaning they were immune from local prosecution and were tried by the US authorities. In the aftermath of the rape, a non-binding referendum saw 95 per cent of the population vote for the removal of all US bases, while 80 per cent of the population around Henoko voted against the relocation, despite the potential jobs on offer in a depressed area.

There are health problems, too. Studies around another city-based facility in Okinawa, the Kadena Air Base, where US planes fly 24 hours a day, show low birth weights, attributed to the disturbance faced by pregnant mothers from the noise, while around many of the bases, clusters of cancers and leukaemia have been reported. Clusters that local researchers blame on long-term pollution of the soil and atmosphere by fuel, oil, solvents and heavy metals associated with military activity.

Paying for their own misery

In the past it was all too convenient for both sides. Okinawa was the only significant part of Japan to be invaded by the US and its allies, with hundreds of thousands of men, women and children dying. It was also immediately turned into a formidable military launch pad for the proposed invasion of mainland Japan. An invasion only brought to a halt by the atomic bombs falling on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For Tokyo, Okinawa was a rural backwater where they didn’t even speak ‘proper’ Japanese, at worst it was Japan’s first colony, not incorporated in Japan until 1879, when Okinawa’s children had their language beaten out of them. Even today on mainland Japan to sound or admit to being Okinawan is to invite discrimination.

Recent revelations that the Okinawans, along with the rest of Japan, are paying for their own misery haven’t helped. Secret protocols in the Okinawa Reversion Treaty of 1971 and in SOFA mean that Japan is contributing at least $100,000 per annum for each US serviceperson in Okinawa, and maybe two or three times that, meaning that Japanese taxpayers are paying dearly for the occupation of Okinawa with US troops costing less to deploy in Japan than at home. Repatriating the troops would cost the Pentagon money.

Since the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, the local population has fought a constant war of attrition to reclaim what they see as their land. In contrast to the rest of Japan, Okinawa showed strong support for the Japanese Communist Party, the SDP and Hatoyama’s DPJ. All three promised they would transform the situation – easy in opposition; but then suddenly two of the three were in government. The SDP made it clear that the US bases issue was a deal breaker, while the local party candidates used the DPJ’s commitment as central elements in their campaigns.

The desperate attempt by Hatoyama to look for an alternative site in Japan proved a disastrous farce. A suggestion of Tokunoshima, an island in the far north of the Okinawa chain that is part of Kagoshima Prefecture rather than Okinawa Prefecture led to mass demonstrations on the island and instant opposition from Kagoshima’s Governor Yuichiro Ito.

Mainland Japan may want US security but they don’t want US soldiers. Now the fight is on to secure a DPJ majority in the Upper House on 11 July. If they win, as they now well might, it is clear that despite the hope that Hatoyama’s resignation would kill the issue, the battle of Okinawa will return to haunt them.

Glyn Ford is a former Labour MEP

Their videos of the uprising made international headlines and provided rare and shocking insight into a country where media censorship is the norm. Burma VJ, the inventive and compelling new film from Danish director Anders Østergaard, presents the original footage, urgent camera movements and rapid zooms intact, intercut with scenes reconstructed under supervision of the VJs themselves.

The film feels very real, and the emotional tone of ‘Joshua’, the young VJ narrator whose face is obscured throughout, is raw. Viral marketing and public response has transformed this sensitive, protagonist-led docudrama into a potent campaigning tool. With the film raising awareness and achieving critical success, a new people-led approach to ‘issue’ filmmaking seems possible.

Media blackout

Pro-democracy demonstrations in Burma, which has been under military rule since 1962, are habitually met with overwhelming and often fatal force. Dissent is suppressed and thousands of protesters, journalists and political prisoners languish in jails and labour camps, accused of being ‘threats to the national peace’. In 1988, student-led protests were brutally attacked. Thousands were killed.

One year later, open elections resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy. The election was swiftly declared void by the junta and Suu Kyi placed under house arrest, where she remains today, a symbol of resistance and hope for a deeply impoverished population.

Government efforts to stem dissent have increasingly targeted the media, purging the country of foreign journalists and passing draconian laws effectively abolishing freedoms of speech and the press. Printers and publishers must submit all output to press scrutiny boards, and ownership of unlicensed media players, including televisions, is prohibited.

It is a criminal offence to distribute, transfer, or acquire information that ‘undermines state security, national solidarity and culture’. Radio and satellite signals are jammed. In 2000 the Internet Law banned postings that are critical of the government. Cyber cafés must be licensed and are required to monitor activity every five minutes.

Reporters Without Borders ranks Burma as the fourth worst country in the world for press freedom. The junta rules with an iron fist that is hidden from view. In 2004 Human Rights Watch reported that ‘forced labour continues to be a policy and practice of the military. Torture is routine.’ The report concluded that ‘Burma is a true military dictatorship.’

The impact of the blackout is well understood by the VJs. ‘I am a video reporter so the world does not forget about us,’ says Joshua in the film. ‘We must show the world that Burma is still here.’

Burma VJ is subtitled ‘reporting from a closed country’, yet the film shows how advances in modern technology undermine government efforts to shield its actions. Viewers of the film see the daily oppression of the Burmese and will feel empowered, or enraged, to take action.

Reporting from a closed country

Anyone wielding a video-camera in Burma is in danger, facing arrest, questioning and, if released, police surveillance. In the opening scenes of Burma VJ such an experience sees Joshua fleeing to protect his colleagues as the Saffron uprising begins. From Indonesia, Joshua communicates with the VJs, trying to make sense of the footage he receives. He veers between hope and fear. After the protests have been crushed and many VJs arrested, Joshua returns to rebuild the VJ network.

Funded by various Scandinavian production houses, Østergaard had long been interested in Burma when he heard about the citizen journalists working for DVB, based in neighbouring Norway. After meeting Joshua at a training camp in Indonesia he decided to make a short film using DVB footage and Joshua’s voiceover. When the Saffron uprising began, the project developed. Østergaard realised that Joshua’s view of the action from a distance could be useful, as the audience experiences his confusion, elation and fear as their own.

The film traces the uprising as it emerges. Sudden fuel price rises, imposed by the junta, devastate the population and small, sporadic protests are swiftly cut down. Burma is a devoutly Buddhist country where monks are deeply respected and rarely politically involved. Against expectations, the monks begin to march, holding their bowls upturned, refusing alms from those in power.

Their gesture of solidarity brings thousands to the streets, balconies and rooftops, signing their support to a sea of saffron robes. VJ footage of the scenes is beamed back into the country and news of the protests quickly spreads. A VJ camera follows a demonstrator’s shout – ‘Look at all the people!’ – to reveal apartment buildings and car parks overflowing with people. It is an inspirational moment justifying reports that 100,000 demonstrated.

The crackdown is brutal. The revered monks are beaten into trucks by soldiers and the public’s shock is tangible. Yet, despite midnight temple raids and corpses floating downriver, the monks continue to march. Eventually civilian demonstrators take their place, only to be more readily shot. The internet is disconnected and foreign journalists banned – but the VJs continue to document events. Burma VJ is utterly gripping because its sense of urgency is real.

The future is viral

The film is being distributed in the UK by Dogwoof, specialists in social issue and documentary film. They are working in coalition with the Burma Campaign UK, Film Aid and the Co-operative Group to engineer a creative marketing programme replicating VJ tactics, utilising internet and people-power to full potential. By connecting the film to new and existing Burma campaigns, wide audiences are being reached.

The Co-op has campaigned for Burma for a decade. The company boycotts Burmese produce and commercial organisations with significant presence there. It financed the celebrity-swamped ‘Saffron Premiere’ held in London this summer and broadcast simultaneously to cinemas around the country. The event initiated a touring programme that has taken the film, along with the ‘Free the Burma VJs!’ campaign, across the UK in recent months. Screenings often included guest speakers, with discussions publicised through existing social justice organisations. Social networking websites such as Twitter and Facebook, originally used to publicise screenings, now keep followers informed of the situation in Burma, ensuring interest remains once the film has come and gone.

The Burma VJ Facebook groups based in the UK and US have more than 2,500 members apiece. They receive regular reports about Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial and the VJs still under arrest. User input to discussions and the promotion of the film within local networks demonstrates the power of technology and the influence wielded by an increasingly online-savvy campaigning public. These online groups have become information hubs for Burma activists and attention is not dying down. Rumours are circulating that the film may receive an Oscar nomination, further boosting the Burma VJ movement’s profile.

By forging a strong and interactive web presence, Burma VJ is taking a bold step along a path blazed by issue-led documentaries in recent years. In 2006, An Inconvenient Truth, featuring Al Gore, reinvigorated campaign-led documentaries for mainstream audiences. It has since become commonplace for similarly themed films to suggest audiences help tackle an issue. Before the credits roll we are offered websites to visit and pledges to take.

Yet while celebrity, slick presentation and financial clout all contributed to the appeal of An Inconvenient Truth, together with a certain element of zeitgeist, Burma VJ arrives two years after the events and relying on word-of-mouth publicity to bring Burma into social consciousness. For Burma VJ, publicity for the film has always doubled as campaign tool. Flyers declaring ‘Free The Burma VJs!’ split into information sheets covering both film screenings and the situation inside the closed country. The other half is a pre-addressed petition postcard. Action can be taken even before the film is seen.

Østergaard does not consider himself to be an activist, but is pleased with the film’s impact: ‘It’s very satisfying to feel that you can do something useful in order to fight this horrifying machine.’ And the VJs, who are the real voices behind the film, continue their work with the explicit support of thousands online.

After the success of Burma VJ, Dogwoof and the Co-op are working together again to promote new environmental documentary The Vanishing of the Bee using a similar, campaign-led approach. So while the film itself deserves to be celebrated, it is perhaps the way that it has been made central to a long-term campaign that is most interesting. Expect to see similar tactics in the future.

Burma VJ is released on DVD on 18 January.

Lechobhai is 55 years old. She is blind and suffers from untreated ailments, including a shockingly exposed fly-infested cervical prolapse. She is bedraggled beyond belief. Some days her husband calls by with food for her.

Twenty-five years ago she was woken from sleep by choking poisonous gas that filled the air. Her eyes burned. The more she rubbed them, the more they hurt. The gas blinded her permanently. She was one of many victims of India’s infamous Bhopal gas disaster, still the world’s worst industrial accident. An estimated 30,000 people died either immediately or soon after it. Hospital wards were jammed with thousands of people suffering from blindness, skin complaints and breathing difficulties. Some half a million people were exposed to the toxic fumes.

The factory produced Sevin, a pesticide containing methyl isocynate (MIC) – a potent toxin. Other chemicals, far less toxic, could have been used, but MIC is much cheaper. And the Union Carbide firm had been allowed to build its pesticide plant in a densely populated, poor area of Bhopal in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in 1969.

Safety appears never to have been a priority for the company. The hazardous MIC was stored in massive tanks instead of safer, smaller steel drums. Maintenance levels of equipment were reduced to save running costs – pipelines were allowed to corrode without replacement and leaking valves weren’t replaced. On the night of the disaster, water got into a storage tank of 42 tonnes of MIC, the reaction of which caused the tank’s temperature to rise to 200oC, a pressure point the system was not designed for, resulting in the release of tremendous volumes of the poisonous gas.

Corporate cost-cutting

Many independent examiners of the disaster, including the International Medical Commission on Bhopal, have found that neglect of regulations and established safety norms were common Union Carbide practice. It was known, for example, that pressure on storage tanks would be increased by corrosion of iron in pipelines used instead of non-stainless steel pipes.

Workers’ warnings that bad maintenance and leaking valves were allowing water to enter MIC tanks were ignored and pleas for emergency contingencies to be drawn up in the event of catastrophe were shunned. Union Carbide was later to claim that their factory equipment had in fact been sabotaged – but they failed to substantiate their plea with any evidence whatsoever.

Within days of the event, the US president of Union Carbide’s Indian operations, Warren Anderson, fled the country, never to return. Ever since, Union Carbide (bought up by Dow Chemicals in 2002) has vigorously fought off compensation claims and charges of industrial neglect and environmental damage in both US and Indian courts.

The company made a one-off ex-gratia payment of $470 million in the hope that it would be in full and final settlement. This is still being challenged in Indian courts. The payment did not go directly to the victims but to the Indian government. What finally reached the suffering victims and families from the $470 million was a pittance among so many people. Much is said to remain unallocated.

Efforts continue to bring Warren Anderson to justice in Indian courts to face prosecution on charges of culpable homicide but, like Union Carbide, Washington won’t hear of it. The US won’t allow its citizen to be extradited and dismisses all allegations against him.

When Union Carbide finally left Bhopal in 1999, it left behind thousands of tons of leaking chemicals, which sank into the surrounding environment. One New Delhi human rights lawyer, Karuna Nundy, is currently pursuing two petitions – one concerning the poisoned environment and the other the inadequate financial award.

In the first petition she claims that waste toxins had been dumped at the pesticide factory site since 1977, seven years before the tragedy. This was Union Carbide’s normal practice, she says. Her claim is backed up by memos proving that the company knew that toxins from the plant were present in the local water supply but did nothing about it. She states that today the chemicals still cause birth defects, vomiting, nausea and coma.

Nundy’s second petition is for better compensation to be paid to the victims. So far, the supreme court in New Delhi has rejected this claim. However, the court is monitoring how to get better health care to sufferers.

Government failure

With convincing justification, NGOs claim central government and the Madhya Pradesh state administration have paid insufficient attention to the suffering of the victims and to the environment, which they say is heavily polluted and poses a continuing health hazard.

One organisation established in 1995, the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, has taken numerous cases to court. Its director, Satinath Sarangi, complains about government incompetence: ‘Medical care is lacking, with no treatment protocols and no co-ordination between research and treatment levels.’ Sarangi claims there is corruption at all levels and that the government has failed in the rehabilitation programme for which money has been allocated but not spent accordingly. ‘There is no shortage of money for these things,’ according to Sarangi.

The Sambhavna clinic provides up to 30,000 patients with regular medical care, community health care, research, education and preventative medicines, and runs a department dedicated to liaising between patients and authorities and fighting for the rights of the people. It has many times taken the government to task in the New Delhi courts and there are still several petitions awaiting deliberation.

Satinath Sarangi feels that closure on this disaster will not happen until the courts decide on appropriate awards in damages and make orders requiring action on the human and environmental damage. Until then, he says ruefully, ‘the fact of life is the poor will always suffer and the poorest of the poor do not count for anything.’

The Bhopal Gas Peedit Mahila is another effective pressure group, which has taken the authorities to court more than 200 times. Abdul Jabbar, who heads the Peedit Mahila, says there have been two disasters – one at the time of the gas leak in 1984 and the second being the continued failure of the authorities subsequently.

Lost in the system

Lechobhai is one victim who appears to have been lost in the system. She remains neglected. Blinded since the accident, she is given the minimum of human care by her ailing husband. In the colony just across the road from the factory, she lives in a decrepit old shack that barely offers shelter.

Forced to lie down all day on the filthy stone floor with no rug or blanket, not being able to see and having no aid, she remains curled up and never leaves her home. She says she always feels at risk because her rickety home offers no protection. She did receive compensation of 10,000 rupees (£780) in 1998, but there was no further help and she receives no medical attention despite her continuing ailments. Even her neighbours won’t approach her, in the false belief that they too will become ill.

While she suffers, the company and its shareholders continue to profit. Indeed, when the Indian government agreed to accept $470 million in compensation and not to press for more, shares in Union Carbide rose by $2 on Wall Street. Since the compensation only cost shareholders $0.43 per share, they actually made money out of the payment.

Meanwhile, the defunct Union Carbide factory still dominates the area worst hit in 1984. The ugly decrepit ruins and blackened, leaking storage tanks remain – a macabre monument to the horrific tragedy, dominating the sealed-off and guarded plant compound. Its perimeter wall is plastered with strongly-worded anti-Union Carbide, anti-Dow and anti-government slogans. A statue erected outside the infamous factory is a permanent memorial to the many lives sacrificed – and a lasting epitaph to Bhopal’s only claim to fame.

For some gay and lesbian Indians the high court declaration will mean having the courage to come out. For Shaleen Rakesh, a 38-year-old veteran gay rights activist, it is the end of a legal campaign he mounted six years ago against an insidious law that left him powerless against homophobic violence and unable even to talk about rights.

‘Domestic partnership, adoption, all the things that straight people take for granted, activists couldn’t even talk about because Section 377 made it illegal to be gay in the first place,’ he says. Under the colonial law, men could be jailed for 10 years for having gay sex, an act which was classed as an ‘unnatural offence’ along with paedophilia and bestiality. ‘How could you talk about rights when the legal framework made you a criminal?’

Six years ago, on behalf of the Naz Foundation HIV/Aids charity, and with the help of a legal charity called the Lawyer\’s Collective, Rakesh began to put together a public-interest litigation against Section 377. ‘Besides just coming out and shouting from the rooftops, trying to change the law was the only thing we could do,’ says Rakesh, who now lives with his partner of seven years in Delhi.

The everyday harassment of gay men by police and thugs also strengthened Rakesh’s resolve to fight the law. Gay men were rarely prosecuted under Section 377, but they were often intimidated or exploited because of it.

Once, while he was coordinating the Naz Foundation’s ‘men who have sex with men’ programme, a whole group of men with whom Rakesh had been working were badly beaten up. ‘A bunch of gay boys who were walking home from the support meeting were attacked by some street boys,’ says Rakesh. ‘They had iron bars and hockey sticks. Many of the boys I knew got their heads smashed that night and were taken to hospital.’

‘We knew who did it. I wanted to make a police complaint but we couldn’t because of the law,’ says Rakesh. ‘The police had a history of raiding groups working with gay men and of rounding up and arresting outreach workers,’ he says. ‘So we were afraid.’ The men who were beaten up were also afraid to speak out. ‘They were not ready to own up to being gay publicly; they thought they would be criminalised,’ he says. ‘In the end we made no complaint.’

Activist journey

Rakesh’s journey to becoming a gay rights activist and legal victor began when, as an 11-year-old schoolboy in Delhi, he realised he was attracted to men. He describes growing up surrounded by a ‘conspiracy of silence’, in which nobody even spoke of the possibility of homosexuality. ‘I would have been happy to hear something I could latch onto or fight with, but there was just silence, nothing,’ he says.

‘There was this hypocrisy. It’s okay to do what you want to do in the bedroom but you don’t talk about it in the living room. I used to find that appalling.’

He got into gay activism in his twenties, finding that voicing what he felt about the state of affairs ‘began to heal the years of silence and oppression that I felt as a gay boy growing up’.

But before he could go public, he had to tell his mother. After keeping his sexuality secret from family and friends for a decade Rakesh came out to his mum, who delighted him by replying simply, ‘So what?’ Most gay Indians do not have the privilege of being born to such liberal parents.

After coming out to his family, he began working with gay organisations, starting with the Humsafar Trust in Mumbai and then the Naz Foundation in Delhi. ‘I became a very openly out gay rights activist,’ he says. ‘I used to write a magazine column, I did training workshops and seminars, I was very vocal in the media, I organised protests and I did a lot of work with the National Human Rights Council on the psychiatric mistreatment of homosexual clients by the medical fraternity.’

Rakesh did not expect legal victory to come so soon – the petition had been winding its way round the country’s judicial pipelines for years – but credits the judicial change of heart to two things: ‘the HIV/Aids argument’ and a groundswell of public activism.

Gay men are up to eight times more likely to contract HIV than the average Indian, and many groups lobbied for Section 377 to be overturned on the grounds that it pushes gay men underground, making them more vulnerable to HIV. NACO, the government’s HIV/Aids control body, came out against Section 377 in 2006, arguing that the law made HIV prevention more difficult. The health minister Anbumani Ramadoss and many AIDS organisations, including the Indian HIV/Aids Alliance, where Rakesh now works, have also called for the law to be abolished in order to protect public health.

Opening the floodgates

Social pressure from around the country, but particularly the big cities, has also grown hugely in the past few years. ‘The floodgates have opened,’ says Rakesh. Cities such as Delhi and Mumbai have held gay pride marches; young gay people and their families have been interviewed by journalists on primetime TV; Bollywood films now have gay characters. Bombay Dost, a gay magazine, has been relaunched and is no longer sold wrapped in brown paper. This cultural shift ‘probably gave the court some degree of comfort to believe that the population was ready for change,’ says Rakesh.

Now that homosexuality has been decriminalised by the high court the government will discuss formally repealing Section 377. But there is also plenty of opposition to a change in the law. Religious groups, leaders of the BJP (the Hindu nationalist party), and millions of ordinary Indians, especially those in rural areas, still find homosexuality unacceptable.

This social discrimination will be much slower to budge. ‘In small towns in India it’s still virtually impossible to come out to your family,’ he says. ‘Even in Delhi most young gay men find it hard to come out.’ Many men succumb to the social pressure around them and keep their sexuality secret. When Rakesh was in his late teens he asked a man he’d met at a cruising spot whether he would ever get married (to a woman). ‘I already am,’ he replied. ‘Isn’t everyone?’

Rakesh no longer sees himself as a political activist. But the legal change he helped to bring about has set a host of new challenges for the next generation of activists – to make social change follow legal change, and to campaign for all the rights that straight people take for granted.

‘I don’t think people are just going to change their opinions overnight because of the law,’ says Rakesh. ‘Stigma and years and years of socialisation don’t get changed overnight, but it’s a start.’

Global developments in gay rights

Venezuela

A law was proposed earlier this year that would legalise same-sex civil unions in Venezuela. It has passed through one round of discussion in the national assembly but it has faced strong opposition from Venezuela’s episcopal church, which has publicly condemned the proposal. The proposed law would also accord equal rights to transexual people.

Zimbabwe

Gay rights campaigners in Zimbabwe believe they have a 50-50 chance of getting gay, lesbian and bisexual people protected under the country’s new constitution, which is currently being drafted. At the moment sex between men is illegal. Keith Goddard, director of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe, says that the best chance of success is to argue for the law to be repealed in the name of HIV prevention.

Pakistan

The supreme court in Islamabad has ordered that transgender people should receive equal protection and support from the government. The interior ministry has also been directed to ensure police provide protection to trans people from criminal elements. Gay sex is still illegal.

Burundi

Gay rights took a step back in Burundi in April this year after the government criminalised homosexuality for the first time in the country’s history. Gay men who are prosecuted can be punished with up to two years in prison.

She looked ever so bad – I thought that she would die.

You know, I had been outside the village that morning and I took a lot of pictures. I was almost leaving the village when I saw two aeroplanes. The first dropped four bombs and the second aeroplane dropped another four napalm [bombs]. And five minutes later, I saw people running, calling “Help! Please help!”‘

A pamphleteer and an organiser, rather than a writer of books of theory, he is best known for a series of trenchant essays published from the early 1970s onwards, each focused on the immediate political priorities of the day. But implicit in all of his work has been a set of coherent and powerful ideas on culture, imperialism and political change.

Sivanandan has been receiving renewed attention since the recent publication of a collection of his non-fiction writing, Catching History on the Wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation (Pluto). At the heart of it is a visceral sense of the painful experience of racism and imperialism.

‘There is all sorts of personal pain in a colonial society,’ he says. ‘Especially when you have an English education and you come from a poor village where hardly anybody speaks English.’ Yet the absorption into European culture that at first alienated him from his people also provided the basis for his political activism. ‘I was able to articulate the pain of imperialism with the language that the Englishman gave me. I have taken the tool from the system to fight the system with.’

Sivanandan was born to a Tamil family in a small village in the north of Sri Lanka, then a British colony and known as Ceylon. His father had risen from a poor, tenant farmer background to become first a postal clerk and then a postmaster. But his Gandhian politics got him into trouble with his British bosses, who punished him by assigning him to one malaria-infested country post office after another.

To avoid this disruption, Sivanandan, the eldest of five children, was sent off to stay with his uncle in the capital Colombo, where he was able to enrol at a top Catholic school on discounted fees. ‘My uncle lived very close to the school but in a more or less slum area. So I played around with the slum boys and went to school with the petty bourgeoisie.’

Encountering Marxism as a student in 1940s Colombo, Sivanandan felt a resonance with some of the things that his father used to say. ‘Anything that is bad has a good side. Anything that is good has a bad side. In other words, there are contradictions. Nonetheless, life moves in terms of those contradictions. Life examines you and that is how knowledge grows.’

Still, activism with any of the Marxist sects did not appeal and Sivanandan was soon working as the manager of a large bank, firmly ensconced in the elite society of newly independent Ceylon and somewhat notorious for marrying across ethnic and religious lines – he was a Hindu from the minority Tamil community, his wife a Catholic from the majority Sinhalese. Then, in 1958, state communalism led to an eruption of anti-Tamil pogroms – the first salvo in the civil war that has continued on and off to the present day (see pages 43-47).

Disillusioned, he came to London. Soon afterwards, his marriage fell apart. And racial discrimination relegated the former bank manager to the lowly status of a tea-boy at a north-west London public library.
Double baptism of fire

These two experiences – of ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka and racism in Britain – became the twin poles of his politics, his ‘double baptism of fire’. One inscribed in his soul the dangers of ethnic separatism, the other brought home the need for a black politics autonomous from the established left.

It was these, potentially conflicting, demands that drove his political creativity in the following decades. A perennial question would be how to steer a course between an inward-looking separatism on the one hand and oppressive absorption into another political culture on the other. Because that same question lies behind current debates on multiculturalism and globalisation, even his early work still has continued relevance.

For Sivanandan, culture is a vehicle for political and personal growth and ‘no culture grows except through bastardisation – a pure culture is a dead culture’. As he says of himself, ‘I am a bastard – culturally!’ Through colonialism, ‘the Portuguese have messed me up, the Sinhalese have messed me up, and so have the Dutch and the British. And I find myself a rich man because all these cultures are sitting inside of me.’

Coming from the north of Sri Lanka, where, as he puts it, ‘nothing grew, except children’, he has made ‘organic’ growth the touchstone of his thinking. He introduced the idea of ‘disorganic development’ to refer to the imposition of a capitalist economy on a feudal society, which is thus unable to produce the kinds of ameliorating social democratic tendencies that emerged with European capitalism. Breaking with the left dogma that took the western class struggle as the sole, legitimate progressive politics, he argued that, in conditions of disorganic development, political struggles emerge that take the form of mass resistance to the state and to imperialism with culture and religion rather than class as the rallying cries. Moreover, new technology had dispersed the hard edge of capitalist contradiction from the European factory floor to the imperial periphery.

In the process, the western labour movement had lost its political radicalism and become vulnerable to racial prejudice. The then common practice on the left of subsuming the question of race to that of class – on the grounds that once you have a classless society it will also be a raceless society – needed to be rejected. ‘We had to have a different politics,’ he says.

A different politics

The creation of that ‘different politics’ – carving open an intellectual and institutional space on the left for anti-racism – has been Sivanandan’s most important contribution to this country. Ironically, with the waning of the class struggle itself from the mid-1980s, he was forced to defend that space from more narrowly conceived forms of ethnic identity politics, which effectively piggy-backed on the opening up of left dogma that he himself had helped foster. Throughout, Sivanandan maintained his insistence that only in the symbiosis between race and class struggles could a genuinely radical politics be found.

Ultimately, what has remained constant in Sivanandan’s thinking is its morality rather than its politics. ‘It is a faith that you have in human beings. I love human beings. I hate the power they have. But they are necessary for me. All the contradictions, the hate, the love, the quarrels, the coming of wisdom, the losing of wisdom – all that comes in the process of growing. That is organic. We don’t need great philosophers to tell us all this. It’s there in what a village boy who became a postmaster had to tell me.’

Arun Kundnani is author of The End of Tolerance, Racism in 21st-century Britain and editor of Race and Class

Catching History By The Wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation is published by Pluto