Twenty years on, the Bhopal gas tragedy has turned into a festival of the oppressed.

Champa Devi, one of the agitators, has promised to beat up Dow - Union Carbide Corporation merged with this company in 2001 - with a broom till justice is done.

To make the point that she means business, she, along with another gas tragedy victim, targeted the effigies of Dow bosses as Amnesty International released its chilling report entitled "Clouds of Injustice: Bhopal disaster twenty years on" at the Constitution Club here on Monday.

The deadly gas leak on the night of December 2/3, 1984, in a Union Carbide factory in Bhopal killed at least 7,000 people within three days of the disaster. Subsequently, at least thrice that number of more victims died a slow death.

Death would have been infinitely more preferable than surviving the gas leak, she said, her voice burning with rage. "Those who died were fortunate; the accursed lived on to tell the tale," she declared.

"Is life so cheap in Hindustan? How many Bhopals it will take before the government wakes up?" she angrily asked. She also detailed a slew of familiar and exotic diseases that are breeding in the city's water system polluted by the leak so much so that more than 100,000 people still suffer from various chronic illnesses.

What is most shocking is that even after two decades, the government has yet to distribute the meagre compensation grudgingly granted by Union Carbide.

As for the powers-that-be at Dow, they have washed their hands off any responsibility for the victims of the horrendous gas disaster.  

The Amnesty report shows "how corporations and governments are evading their human rights obligations and underlines the need for universal human rights for businesses."

The report vividly describes the alleged neglect by the Indian authorities "to adequately protect their citizens both before and after the disaster."

It also exposes criminal neglect of basic safety provisions by Union Carbide and the trickery and stonewalling it used after the leak to suppress the facts so as to scrimp on compensation.

The report darkly hints at the conspiracy of silence to deny the victims their rightful compensation.  The scale of obfuscation is benumbing: basic facts about what led to the leak and the statistics on death and injuries still remain entangled in speculation.

A generation on, survivors are still waiting for just compensation and adequate medical care, said Benedict Southworth, campaigns director at Amnesty International.

Amnesty has appealed to the Indian government "to prevent further damage to people's health, by ensuring Dow cleans up the site and fully compensates the victims" of the gas disaster.

 -- Indo-Asian News Service