A South Indian rapper is targeting Dow Chemical with rhymes — demanding the US company pay more in victims’ compensation and environmental damages stemming from a horrific chemical gas leak that killed thousands of people and sickened countless others.
Sofia Ashraf last month debuted Dow vs. Bhopal: a Toxic Rap Battle, calling the story of what happened in the central Indian city of Bhopal “a critical message to get out there.”
The 1984 tragedy, considered the world’s worst industrial accident, was caused by 40 tonnes of deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaking from a pesticide plant run by Union Carbide Corp — later purchased by Dow Chemical. The leak killed more than 15,000 and sickened at least a half-million more.
Activists say thousands of children have since been born with brain damage, missing palates and twisted limbs.
Union Carbide paid US$470 million in a 1989 deal reached with the Indian government, which Dow has said takes care of its liability. However, activists say the sum was far too low and ignored the need to clean up the environment.
“Speak to young people, and they know about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they know about the Holocaust,” the 29-year-old songstress said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “But very few of them will know about the Bhopal gas leak tragedy.”
She hopes her video will change that, with its provocative clips of dancers wearing gas masks, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi orating, US President Barack Obama donning sunglasses and presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump doused in water interspersed with images of hospital rooms and Ashraf rapping angrily at the camera.
“This ain’t road kill, death’s still taking its toll,’’ she raps over a driving base beat. “There’s water, water everywhere, corroding our copperware, it’s so polluted, quit deluding.’’
This is not the first time the Chennai-based artist has used rhymes to call on multinationals to act.
Her last year rap video Kodaikanal Won’t took aim at Unilever, calling on the company to help former workers at a thermometer plant in the Tamil Nadu hill resort of Kodaikanal. Unilever’s Indian subsidiary closed the plant 15 years ago after mercury contamination was discovered there.
Earlier this year, the company reached a settlement agreement with the 591 former workers it had employed. Exact terms were not released but the company disputes claims that workers’ health was affected by exposure to mercury.
Ashraf has gone after Dow Chemicals before for the Bhopal disaster.
Her 2008 song called Don’t Work For Dow urged engineering students to ignore company recruiters on college campuses.
The latest song takes the Indian complaint abroad — urging the US government to force Dow to offer more in compensation and clean up.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing