Up in Ontario

BBC's Bhopal Blunder

An activist group called the Yes Men sent a representative to be interviewed by British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and to act as spokeman for Dow Chemicals on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak, one of the worst man-made disasters of all time.

The Yes Men are an activist group that makes its case for social justice by impersonating famous corporate leaders and imparting a social justice messages into the communications of those famous leaders. They call this Identity Correction. Before their interview on the BBC they ran a website critical of Dow Chemicals called Dow Ethics. Since their interview on the BBC the domain name DowEthics.com has been repossessed by Dow Chemicals through some tricky registrar loopholes and legal wrangling.

But on November 29th the Yes Men received an email at DowEthics from the BBC asking if they would like to participate in a story on the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal gas leak, where thousands of people died after a catastrophic leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant (Dow acquired Union Carbide in 2001 and assumed all assets and liabilities). Since that leak on December 3rd, 1984, a reported 150,000 more victims have been left severly disabled, their quality of life ruined. The site in Bhopal, India that the Union Carbide plant occupied has never been cleaned up and continues to infect those who live nearby.

The Union Carbide corporation also faces criminal charges of culpable homicide (manslaughter) in India. Its CEO, Warren Anderson, fled the country in 1984 and now lives in Long Island, NY. The company has ducked any responsibility for the incident ever since. It's basically the worst-case scenario of a global, transnational corporation washing its hands of responsibility in a poor backwater, out of the public eye, whose people are voiceless and have no power.

So the Yes Men sent a fictional character to the BBC to act as a spokesman for Dow. As they explain, "Mr. Jude (patron saint of the impossible) Finisterra (earth's end) becomes Dow's official spokesperson." They pull off the hoax live on the air. Read the full report and watch the video segment of how the Yes Men turn the tables on Dow Chemical.

The great effect of the hoax is that Dow has to issue a statement denying each of the assertion of the Yes Men. No, then will not compensate any of the victims, they will not push for the extradition of Warren Anderson, they will not clean up the Bhopal site. Disinformation on the record becomes the catalyst for highlighting an injustice. The trickster instinct runs deep.