Impersonation as
Protest:
How a Group of Performance Artists
Shed Light on an Environmental Catastrophe
By Bennett Kirschner
At first, the night of December 2nd,
1984 in Bhopal, India was just like any other. A chilly calm draped itself over the
city’s residents, and the bustling streets quieted to a faint drone. But between
12:30 and 1am that night, people throughout the city started waking up to the
smell of a strange, yellow gas floating through the air, and the sound of
themselves violently coughing. Their eyes burned “as if chili powder had been
flung into them,” and thousands started vomiting uncontrollably as they tried
to escape the all-encompassing cloud (Agarwal 206). By 3am that night, a mass
exodus of about 200,000 people – approximately a quarter of the city’s
population – had begun, leaving behind the bodies of animals and children who
did not have the strength to help themselves (207). The city streets were jammed
with scooters carrying entire families and trucks that overflowed with dozens
of desperate, suffocating people (206).
Around
11:30pm, a pesticide plant owned by the Texas-based Union Carbide Corporation had
started leaking methyl isocyanate, a toxic gas commonly known as MIC that was used
to produce Sevin, Union Carbide’s version of the insecticide carbaryl (208). Small
chemical spills were a common occurrence in the city, which perhaps explains
why the reactions of the local government and Union Carbide, both that night
and the morning after, were deferred and optimistic (208). Early the next
morning, Bhopal residents were told it was safe to return to their homes, and that
the city streets, now coated with vomit and flanked by trees that had died
overnight, were safe to walk (208).
In
spite of these calls for calm, it was almost immediately obvious to residents
of Bhopal that this spill was unlike any the city had ever seen. It had all happened
in a matter of mere hours. By 4 am on December 3rd, over 40 tons of
MIC, along with a cocktail of other noxious, still largely undisclosed chemicals,
had poured from one of the plant’s gas tanks and into Bhopal’s atmosphere,
exposing over 600,000 residents and reaching as far as 5 miles downwind (Eckerman
63).
Today,
the devastating effects of the spill are well-documented, though still disputed
by legal representatives of Union Carbide. Official estimates of the death toll,
which account both for the thousands who died within two weeks of the spill and
those who died over the coming years from diseases directly connected to MIC
exposure, exceed 15,000, and continue to climb with each passing year (Lal). The
list of the spill’s health impacts goes on, and explains why many characterize
it as the world’s most devastating industrial disaster: cancer rates among
victims are ten times higher than the national average; children of victims are
disproportionately born with birth defects; and groundwater, relied upon by many
of Bhopal’s poorer residents, is still contaminated with a slew of toxins, including
heavy metals and pesticide concentrations that are “561 times [higher] than the
Indian standard” (Lal; Labunska et al. 3; Ramesh; Banerjee).
And
while the residents of Bhopal continue to struggle with the spill’s aftermath,
its perpetrators have met hardly any legal or financial backlash. Union Carbide
accepted a $470 million settlement mediated by the Indian Supreme Court in 1989,
a number based on grievous underestimations of the death toll and the number of
people who suffered permanent disabilities because of the spill (Broughton 116).
Families of the dead were awarded a paltry average sum of $2,200, and the chemical
plant, now abandoned, continues to leak toxic chemicals and heavy metals into
the earth (117).
And
though the Supreme Court settlement mandated that Union Carbide clean up the spill
site decades ago, the sale of the company to Dow Chemical in 2001 made a complete
environmental remediation seem even more doubtful than it already was: today, the
Bhopal plant still contains over 8,000 tons of carcinogenic chemicals, but Dow
Chemical remains steadfast in its refusal to clean up the site (Ramesh). The
company claims that the matter is out of their hands, since they are merely the
inheritors of the spill’s legacy, not its perpetrators. Union Carbide, which
remains a thriving subsidiary of Dow, has found a way to hide from culpability,
and the people of Bhopal, having no culprit to point to, have been left forsaken
by the international community.
But
for one fleeting instant in December of 2004, on the 20th
anniversary of the disaster, the residents of Bhopal received an unexpected
glimmer of hope. A spokesman for Dow named Jude Finisterra was appearing on the
BBC World during the primetime news hour in the United Kingdom to commemorate the
disaster and to make a major announcement on behalf of the world’s third-largest
chemical producer.
The
host, Stephen Sackur, introduced his guest, and turned to him. “Do you now
accept responsibility for what happened?” he asked over video conference.
With
a manicured backdrop of the Eiffel Tower on a clear summer day, Jude tentatively
pivoted on his swivel chair and took a deep breath in.
“Steve,
yes.” Jude’s eyelids closed for a second. “Today is a great today for all of us
at Dow, and I think for millions of people around the world as well. It’s 20
years since the disaster, and today I’m very happy to announce that for the
first time, Dow is accepting full responsibility for the Bhopal catastrophe. We
have a $12 billion plan to finally, at long last, fully compensate the victims,
including the 120,000 who may need medical care for their entire lives, and to
fully and swiftly remediate the Bhopal plant site.”
The
interview went on for five minutes, and offered a stunning reversal of Dow’s refusal
to assume any responsibility for the disaster. Jude promised that Dow would “provide
more than $500 per victim, which is all that they’ve seen – [there’s a] maximum
of $500 per victim, [which is] not ‘plenty good for an Indian,’ as one of our
spokespersons unfortunately said a couple of years ago…Furthermore, we will
perform a full and complete remediation of the Bhopal site…which has not been
cleaned up. When Union Carbide abandoned the site 16 years ago, they left tons
of toxic waste, and the site continues to be used as a playground by children.
Water continues to be drunk from the groundwater underneath,” he lamented.
Jude
promised that Dow would gather the money for these long overdue reparations by liquidating
Union Carbide, “this nightmare for the world and this headache for Dow,” and devoting
its $12 billion value to the residents of Bhopal who had been suffering for two
decades. “This is the first time in history that a publicly owned company…has
performed an action which is significantly against its bottom line simply
because it’s the right thing to do,” he exclaimed at the end of the five-minute
long interview.
But
Jude Finisterra was not a representative for Dow Chemical – in fact, he wasn’t
even Jude Finisterra. His real name is Jacques Servin, and he is a member of a
small collective of activists called the Yes Men who masquerade as corporate
representatives to shed light on their deceptive PR campaigns. Later that
night, in an interview as himself, Jacques admitted that he hoped to use the announcement
“to show that [Dow Chemical] could…easily accept responsibility [for the
disaster] and that there was something very concrete they could do about it.”
Mr.
Servin’s audacious act of protest had sent shockwaves across the world. Within
minutes of its first airing, the interview had received international media
coverage, and Dow Chemical’s stock on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange plummeted
over 4 percent, costing the company over $2 billion (The Yes Men Are Revolting). And instead of offering a tailored
declaration of solidarity with the victims of Bhopal to commemorate the spill’s
20th anniversary, as they had originally planned, Dow’s spokespeople
were forced to issue multiple statements which reiterated the company’s
obstinate refusal to do anything about the spill.
Servin’s
stunt was criticized by many as heartless, as it had falsely convinced
thousands of victims in Bhopal that the years of anguish they’d endured might
soon come to a close. And while Jacques lamented the disappointment they must
have felt when the interview was revealed to be a hoax, he remained steadfast
in his conviction. “Let’s put this in contrast,” he said in a subsequent interview.
“I mean, we might have given people two hours of false hope; Dow has given them
20 years of suffering.”
Instead
of watching it recede into the periphery of the public political consciousness,
Servin and the Yes Men had reignited the conversation surrounding the Bhopal
disaster. Jude Finisterra’s statements had forced viewers around the world to
wonder why Dow Chemical had done virtually nothing to remediate the site, and
to see its failure to act as a conscious choice, rather than inevitability. As
strange as it may sound, the Yes Men had shed light on Dow’s utter lack of compassion by humanizing the
corporation, and showing that it was capable of practicing kindness towards people
other than its shareholders.
Works Cited
Agarwal, A, Merrifield, J. and Tandon, R. No Place to Run:
Local Realities and Global Issues of the Bhopal Disaster. Tennessee: Highlander
Center and Society of Participatory Research in Asia, 1985. 206-232. Print.
Banerjee,
Souparno. “Countinuing Nightmare in Bhopal: CSE Laboratory Tests Soil, Water
Samples from Union Carbide.” Centre for Science and Environment, 15 April 2011.
https://www.cseindia.org/continuing-nightmare-in-bhopal-cse-laboratory-tests-soil-water-samples-from-union-carbide--1548
Broughton,
Edward. “The Bhopal Disaster and Its Aftermath: A Review.” Environmental Health:
A Global Access Science Source, Vol. 4, No. 6. (Feb. 2005): 114-119. Print.
Eckerman,
Ingrid. The Bhopal Saga: Causes and
Consequences of the World’s Largest Industrial Disaster. Bhopal India:
Universities Press, 2004. Print.
Labunska,
I., A. Stephenson, K. Brigden, R. Stringer, D. Santillo, and P.A. Johnston. “Toxic
Contaminants at the former Union Carbide Factory Site, Bhopal, India: 15 Years
After the Bhopal Accident.” Greenpeace, 1999. Print.
Lal,
Neeta. The Diplomat, 19 April, 2017. https://thediplomat.com/2017/04/bhopal-gas-tragedy-still-haunts-india/
Ramesh,
Randeep. The Guardian, 29 April 2008. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/30/india.pollution
The Yes Men Fix the World. Directed by Kurt Enfehr,
performances by Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos, HBO, 2009.
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