balaji@bacall.UUCP (Balaji Narasimhan) (10/03/86)
Dear Friends:
We came to know in the past few days that the state government is
cracking down on voluntary organizations working with Bhopal gas
victims. Many of them are accused of being spies, foreign spies,
spies for Union Carbide, etc. When you know the history of these
groups, how they have been in Bhopal from the beginning, trying
to help the victims despite all the difficulties caused by Union
Carbide and by the Indian and MP governments, these accusations
don't make any sense. I have typed below some information from
the Indian press - Statesman, Times of India and Indian Express.
It is clear that far from being Union Carbide spies, these people
are actually exposing Union Carbide activities while the
government is willing to let Carbide do what it wants.
I would like you to read the information and think of what we can
do. Some ideas are to spread the news as much as possible, to
write letters individually to American media and Indian papers
here, to get the human rights committee to work on it, to get
Indian associations on our campuses and elsewhere to send
protests to the Indian and MP governments, to write letters of
support to the people and groups being harassed, etc. If we all
think about it, we may come up with better ideas.
One aspect, not mentioned below, is that Arvind Rajagopal, who
almost got arrested with Gautam Banerjee, is a graduate student
in sociology at Berkeley. He is doing his thesis on some topic
to do with Bhopal. Our friends at Stanford - Gopi and Sujiv -
know him quite well. Arvind is at present in Madras. According
to a letter received from him in the bay area, a warrant is out
for his arrest. We don't yet know all the implications: Can he
come back to Berkeley to resume his studies until the charges are
disposed of? Is he going to be arrested? We hope to find out
soon, but it is clear that what is happening in Bhopal is not
just petty harassment like cops telling us to get out of the way.
I would like to suggest that whatever letters or statements are
produced oppose the harassment of the voluntary organizations and
demand the withdrawal of all charges against members of these
groups - in particular, Bergman, Banerjee and Rajagopal.
With regards,
Sekhar
Bhopal Clampdown on Voluntary Work
Gautam Banerjee, a member of a voluntary organization called
Bhopal Group for Information and Action, was recently arrested in
Bhopal under the Official Secrets Act for recording a meeting of
doctors which had been announced in the Engagements column of the
local newspapers on September 2. A student of computer science
in Calcutta, Banerjee had gone to Bhopal two weeks before his
arrest.
Dr M.P. Dwivedi, an official of the Indian Council of Medical
Research, has stated publicly that nothing secret was discussed
at the meeting which was convened to recount the experiences of
doctors who have been treating victims of the Bhopal gas
disaster.
David Bergman, a British national who had been running an
informal cultural center for children called Suraksha in a
hutment colony affected by MIC, was arrested under the Official
Secrets Act on September 7. Bergman was first arrested for
allegedly overstaying in India after the expiry of his visa,
though he had applied for an extension long before it expired.
He was given bail on the charge but within minutes was rearrested
under the OSA and remanded in police custody. He began a hunger
strike against the "unjustifiable detention."
A section of the local press has described the two men as spies,
quoting as proof the seizure of "incriminating documents" from
the office of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action. Two
other members of the group - Arvind Rajagopal and S. Tinath
Sarangi - have been similarly labeled and are stated to be
"absconding."
The group has been producing a monthly newsletter about the
condition of the gas victims. The state police has charged that
they have been spying for Union Carbide. Group members say that
the "incriminating documents" found in the police raid were
materials needed for the next issue of the newsletter including a
case study of a MIC victim, and a list of former Union Carbide
employees who were approached by a senior company official and
cajoled to support the company's propaganda that the leak was an
act of sabotage.
Group members say that most of these former employees had
rejected the advances and were willing to be quoted saying so.
This was why their names were listed. If the government was
serious about keeping Union Carbide spies out of Bhopal, the
activists wondered, why did it allow the Union Carbide official
to work with impunity while harassing the volunteers.
The only explanation, they said, was that while they criticized
Union Carbide, they also criticized the state government for the
inadequacy of its relief measures in every respect.
Ravi Rajan and Sarangi told reporters that the July issue of the
newsletter, "Bhopal", had carried a story on the lack of
information on health management available to private doctors in
the gas-affected areas. Hence, on hearing of a meeting of
private doctors, government doctors and members of ICMR, they
decided to cover it. Accordingly, on September 2, Rajagopal and
Banerjee went to the meeting. Besides taking notes, they also
taped parts of the meeting. There was nothing new at the meeting
except for heated mutual recriminations between two groups of
government doctors about proper monitoring of records of the gas
victims. All of a sudden, three government doctors manhandled
Rajagopal and Banerjee and snatched their cassettes. The arrest
took place two days later.
The People's Union for Democratic Rights and the People's Union
for Civil Liberties issued a joint statement promptly strongly
condemning the arrests, challenging the government to prove its
case in court, and demanding the immediate release of the two.
The Drug Action Forum and the No More Bhopal Committee, two
Calcutta-based organizations working in Bhopal, condemned the
arrest of Banerjee and demanded his release. Speaking for DAF,
Dr Sujit Das said Banerjee was a member of the Forum and had been
sent to Bhopal to help BGIA, which had been collecting medical
information on the gas victims and publishing it in monthly
newsletters.
Dr Das, who is also a member of the committee appointed by the
Supreme Court to draw up a comprehensive treatment program for
the gas victims, said the survey by the Indian Council of
Medical Research was inadequate. DAF will shortly undertake a
broad epidemiological survey of the gas victims. Till now, many
questions remained unanswered, Dr Das said. The government is
yet to state categorically the exact number of gas victims and
identify each of them. The medical criteria to determine a gas
victim has not yet been defined. There was need to categorize
the patients for the purpose of better treatment.
More on Bergman in Bhopal
David Bergman, 21, left his native Birmingham a year ago in
August after getting a degree in law and politics. He, and a
friend Jonathan Evans, rode their bicycles; in the months before
they left, they raised pledges of donations of 5,000 pounds to
help the gas victims if they finished the bike trip.
The bike trip was 15,000 km and took over six months. After
spending a month looking at the situation, Bergman decided to
work with children: they were the most affected and, besides, as
a foreigner not knowing the local language, he could do more with
children.
Bergman's Suraksha works with 50 children in three groups: boys
6-12, girls 6-12, and children under 6. "We work with the
children on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
They paint cut paper, make models, play kho-kho, kabaddi and tell
stories. On Wednesday the older children organize the younger
children so that they learn to do things on their own." On
Saturday there are discussions with the children.
Just before he was arrested, Bergman said he planned to stay
another six months before returning to England.