Exhibition Highlights Link Between Olympics and Bhopal Disaster

Amnesty International UK has joined with Indian artist Samar Jodha to portray the tragedy of Bhopal in an audio-visual art exhibition.

The multi-sensory art installation, Bhopal, A Silent Picture, opened to the public on July 19th in East London’s Shoreditch at the UK offices of Amnesty International. Its aim is to highlight the link between the Olympics and Dow Chemical. Artist Jodha stresses that the installation will help prevent the constant struggle of memory against forgetting.

In 1984, 7,000 to 10,000 people were killed instantly by a toxic gas leak from a pesticide factory, now owned by Dow Chemical, situated in Bhopal, India. A further 20,000 people died over the course of the next 20 years.

With the site still contaminated, it is affecting the lives of over 100,000 people, both physically and mentally.
According to Amnesty International, Dow Chemical has never addressed these ongoing human rights issues. This is just one of the reasons why Amnesty International is upset with Dow Chemical. The head of the Olympic Games has enlisted Dow Chemical as a sponsor for the London 2012 Games. This exhibition, says Amnesty, is a voice for all proclaiming that they do not want Dow’s toxic legacy tainting the Olympics for them.

“Bhopal is an ongoing disaster and one of the worst abuses of human rights by a corporation in the last 50 years,” said Madhu Malhotra, director of Amnesty International’s gender programme, on the organisation’s website.

“Given the toxic legacy attached to Dow Chemicals, it seems absurd that LOCOG chose this company to sponsor an event billed as the most sustainable Games ever. It’s time they admit their mistake and apologise.”

Through the eyes of the victim

Samar Jodha has cleverly put together a temperature-controlled metal container to re-create the night of December 2nd, 1984, in Bhopal. He has used the latest technology to enable the public to gain a realistic idea of what the victims went through.

From 3-D images, blow-torched mannequins, a soundscape, and even the sound of the first victim of the leak struggling to breathe, it provides a real insight into the biggest industrial tragedy to date.

A student activist, Safreen, told Amnesty International, “Young children are forced to give up school and work because their parents have been affected by the gas.” This is just one of the ways in which the tragedy has affected people.

Amnesty International is calling on the London Organising Committee for the 2012 Olympic Games (LOCOG) to “retract public statements defending Dow and apologise to Bhopal survivors for damage caused to them by such statements”.

Amnesty says it also wants LOCOG to recommend to the International Olympic Commit- tee and to future organisers of the Olympic Games the adoption of policies to ensure human rights are respected in all aspects of the Games, including sponsorship arrangements.

The exhibition is free and open to the public between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m., until July 31st.

Faatima Ahmed is a freelance journalist based in London.

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