Personal:

Name: Satinath Sarangi
Born: September 25, 1954
Educational Qualification: M. Tech (Metallurgical Engineering), Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. 1980 [He was awarded medals for "outstanding" undergraduate and post graduate student].
He enrolled for PhD in 1980, but dropped out in 1984.

• 1971: Exposure to and involvement with indigenous peoples struggle for self determination in Bihar
• 1976: Founder member of Society of Social Workers, a group of student activists involved with organizing low caste agricultural workers in villages near Varanasi.
• December 1984: Founder member of Zahareeli Gas Kand Sangharsh Morcha [Poisonous Gas Episode Struggle Front], an organization of survivors of the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal.
• June 1986: Founder member of Bhopal Group for Information and Action
• April 1989: Campaign tour to USA, UK, Ireland and The Netherlands
• 1992: Member organizing committee, Bhopal session of Permanent Peoples Tribunal on Industrial and Environmental Hazards and Human Rights in Bhopal
• 1993: National Organizing Secretary, the International Medical Commission on Bhopal
• June 1995 to present: Founder and Managing Trustee of the Sambhavna Trust. Trustee of the Bhopal Medical Appeal, UK.

Publications:

• Nishant Ranjan, Satinath Sarangi, V. T. Padmanabhan, Steve Holleran, Rajasekhar Ramakrishnan and Daya R. Varma:
  Methyl isocyanate exposure and growth patterns of adolescents in Bhopal. Journal of the American Medical Association 290:1856-1857, 2003.
• Satinath Sarangi:
  The Bhopal aftermath: generations of women affected. Silent Invaders - Pesticides, Livelihoods and Women's Health, Edited by Miriam Jacobs and Barbara Dinham, Zed Books, London 2003
• Satinath Sarangi:
  Le de'sastre impuni de Bhopal, Pour Que Vive La Terre, Edited by Roger Cans and Benoit Hopquin, EPA-Hachette Livre, 2003
• Satinath Sarangi:
  Crimes of Bhopal and the Global Campaign for Justice. Social Justice. San Francisco, Volume 29,Number 3, 2002
• Barbara Dinham and Satinath Sarangi:
  The Bhopal gas tragedy-1984 to? The evasion of corporate responsibility, Environment and Urbanization IIED, London, Vol. 14 No. 1, April 2002
• Satinath Sarangi:
  An industrial disaster becomes a medical nightmare. Issues in Medical Ethics. Vol. 9, No. 3, July-September 2001, Mumbai, India.
• Satinath Sarangi:
  Bhopal Gas Tragedy. India Disasters Report - Towards a Policy Initiative, Edited by Parasuraman S, Unnikrishnan P. V. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2000

Lectures:

Addressed public meetings, seminars and conferences in Czechoslovakia, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, South Korea, Sweden, United Kingdom and United States of America including at the following Universities:

University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Stanford University, San Francisco, Columbia University, New York, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, University of the District of Columbia, Washington DC, London School of Economics, London, University of Sussex, Brighton, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands and other places.

Here are some of the web sites he is directly involved with:

• www.bhopal.org
• www.bhopal.net
• www.studentsforbhopal.org

Rachna Dhingra 32, originally from Delhi, was just six years old when the world's worst industrial disaster struck Bhopal in 1984. She was 18 when she moved to the US with her mother and later joined a student group that took up the issue of the Bhopal gas disaster. Rachna graduated with a business degree in 2000 and went to live in Bhopal in January 2003. She is now an incredible force in the international campaign and locally with the Bhopal Group of Information and Action. Before returning to India she was associated with Dow Chemical, the parent company of Union Carbide Corporation. It was the UCC factory in Bhopal from where methyl isocyanate gas leaked, killing thousands.

"I love what I am doing. For me it is not a sacrifice but something that helps me sleep better at night without any regret. What angers me most is that even 25 years after the disaster, the government can allow people to drink contaminated water. Every person is moved by something in his or her life. For me it was the fact that the company I was working for was more concerned about profits than lives of the people. I came to Bhopal to see that demands like a better healthcare system and income generation plans are implemented. A quarter of a century is a long time to wait for justice but I am hopeful that eventually everyone will get justice."

Safreen is 17 and was exceptional presence on the US survivor tour in July 2009. She will be coming on the bus with her brother Amir, who is 15. They will be missing school and will catch up once they are back. Both Safreen and Amir became involved in this campaign through their parents.

Amir and Safreen's parents have been very active in the struggle since the immediate aftermath of the disaster in 1984. Safreen, Amir and their sister Yasmeen got involved in 2008 on the walk (padayatra) from Bhopal to Delhi. Yasmeen walked the entire 850km (500 miles) as she was able to get time off from school; Safreen joined the walk halfway and stayed in Delhi for 120 days of protest; Amir joined the protest in Delhi after the padayatra and was active in the children's group.

Both Safreen and Amir participated in several actions against the Prime Minister of India. They were arrested four times during the 120-day agitation for breaching the security code of the Prime Minister while asking for clean drinking water. They mobilised children in high schools all around Delhi and had them send "Hearts" to the Prime Minister, so that he would fulfill his promise and meet the demands of the Bhopalis.

After the agitation Safreen and Amir, together with other young survivors decided to form an organisation of their own, Children against Dow/Carbide. This is a children's organisation where all the decisions are taken by children and they collectively decide on how to participate in the campaign. Both Safreen and Amir are founding members of the organisation.

Children against Dow/Carbide have campaigned from house to house asking people in the Gas Relief Minister's constituency not to vote for him as he had done nothing for the relief and rehabilitation of Bhopal gas victims; they organised a rally of 400 children asking the Government to provide clean drinking water; they have also addressed several press conferences and attended meetings with other pollution-impacted communities. They also staged an action at Dow's headquarters in Chennai, where they covered themselves with shrouds and laid in front of Dow's office asking them to clean up the toxic mess in Bhopal.

Amir and Safreen have been away from home before and have coped well. Obviously there will be times when they will miss their family and friends and they'll be talking to their parents at least twice a week. Eating food they are used to is important for their health and wellbeing. On the US tour the Indian families that they stayed with packed Indian microwaveable meals which worked well when there was a microwave around! They can cook too but cooking every day will not be possible due to the packed schedule. Otherwise they are normal teens, they like watching youtube and listening to Hindi music!

Becky first became involved in the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal in 1999 when she supported her friend Tim Edwards' "Lifecycle" bike ride from Brighton, UK to Bhopal: a project to raise awareness of the ongoing disaster there and the award-winning work being done by the free Sambhavna Clinic run by survivors for survivors. Over the past ten years Becky has volunteered for the campaign and the clinic, mainly in Bhopal itself, most recently on the padayatra in 2006 and is now working for the Bhopal Medical Appeal in Brighton, UK.

For Becky, the Bhopal bus tour is a 25th anniversary dream come true, an incredible opportunity to strengthen the international campaign for justice, thereby preventing future Bhopals and also to share the Sambhavna Clinic's hard won medical knowledge, not to mention a huge dose of their enduring positive spirit.

I met Becky in India just before she joined the Bhopalis on their 2006 Padayatra; her stories of Bhopal have enthralled me ever since. We work together very well - I also work in events management and planning, working at music festivals and trade shows. Following the success of the Bhopal Medical Appeal campaign at the Glastonbury festival in June of this year, there was little doubt that the bus tour had to go ahead; we had some fascinating discussions with people who remembered the disaster and were horrified to hear that the Bhopalis are still suffering, and informing those of a younger generation about corporate irresponsibility, and the positive outcomes that can come out of such incredible suffering.

We are all very excited about this Bhopal campaign / Amnesty International collaboration. I especially can't wait to meet the Bhopalis; I'm really looking forward to supporting them in publicising the water contamination in Bhopal, the generations affected and the free Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal; we're going to make these issues hot topics of discussion and action across Europe in the run up to the 25th anniversary on the 2nd/3rd December.

I was just six-month-old when the world's worst industrial disaster struck Bhopal in 1984, so have no memory of that night, the all I know (my sister Mamta told me) about that night is that my sister wrapped me in a blanket and ran away. We lost our parents, five siblings that night, I, my siter Mamta, and elder brother Sunil were the three survivors of our family, and later in the year 2006, my elder brother Sunil (one of the three survivors), committed suicide by hanging himself in his room of the apartment I live, actually he was suffering from Paranoid Schizophrenia, had already tried to kill him thrice, and finally succeded on July 26, 2006, when he hanged himself.

I lived in an orphanage in Bhopal for over 6 years, and then moved to a house in Gas Relief Colony/Widows Colony, where houses were allotthed to the people who had lost their loved ones in the disaster, and after living with two other survivors of my family - my sister Mamta and brother Sunil, came to know about the fight for justice in Bhopal, and exactly I do not know, when did get involved in the Bhopal campaign, but it was sometime in the year 2004, when I saw men, women along with their children shouting slogans on streets commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Bhopal Gas disaster.

Again, It was sometime in August 2004, when I started translating for the journalists, photographers, filmmakers visiting Bhopal to do different kind of stories, and with every stories I learnt a bit about the disaster.

I did my bachelors in Commerce with Computer Applications from the Bhopal University, and now (for now), wish to pursue my Masters in Business Administration from one of the good business schools of India.

In the year 2006, I was one of the fasters who had fasted for seven days on the pavement at Janatar Mantar, Delhi, to get our demands met by the Indian Prime Minsiter of India, and recently back in June, 2008 - I was one of the fasters who fasted indefinitely for 21 days, again at Jantar Mantar, Delhi, I didn't participate in any of the padyatras, had joined them in Delhi itself.