Society

What Happened: On the night of December 2-3, 1984, deadly methyl isocyanate gas leaked from the Union Carbide Factory on the outskirts of Bhopal, India. Thousands of people were killed immediately; advocacy groups estimate that some 20,000 eventually died from health complications caused by the toxic gas. This week marked the 40th anniversary of the tragedy, and survivors pointed out the continuing harm: toxic waste remains on the site, and soil and groundwater contamination are still damaging the health of local people.

Our Focus: Survivors are still campaigning for justice 40 years later, pointing out that neither corporate leaders nor Indian government officials served any jail time for the disaster. Union Carbide eventually paid $470 million in compensation – which one analyst noted amounted to under $500 per victim for “life-changing injuries.” The businesspeople behind Union Carbide – now owned by the U.S. firm Dow Chemicals – “tried to get away with their crime [and] have been aided by government and politicians in myriad ways,” Balkrishna Namdev, president of Bhopal Gas Peedit Nirashrit Pension Bhogi Manch, a survivors’ organization, told The Diplomat. He added, “We won’t relent. Justice for Bhopal is now a battle for a world safer from corporate crimes.”

What Comes Next: Namdev sees “corporate profit-mongering” as the common denominator in both the Bhopal disaster and the unfolding climate crisis endangering the planet. “Bhopal is a classic case of corporates getting away with incorrigible crimes,” said social activist Rachna Dhingra of Bhopal Group for Information and Action. “...It sets the worst kind of precedent.” Survivors say they are trying to set the right precedent by pushing for accountability in new court cases, but whether they will have better luck this time remains in question.

INTERVIEW

Mark L. Clifford, author of “The Troublemaker: How Jimmy Lai Became a Billionaire, Hong Kong’s Greatest Dissident, and China’s Most Feared Critic,” on why Lai stayed in Hong Kong, knowing his arrest was coming: “Hong Kong gave Jimmy Lai freedom and he often said that he owed the city everything… He told associates that he would rather be hanging, dead, from a lamppost in Central than to give the Chinese Communist Party the satisfaction of saying he ran away.”

Northeast Asia

In a stunning announcement late on December 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law, claiming it was necessary to “root out the anti-state forces” (by which Yoon meant the opposition Democratic Party, which controls the National Assembly). The DP quickly rallied its members to pass a resolution demanding Yoon rescind the order. Ruling party lawmakers also supported the middle-of-the-night vote, which passed unanimously. Yoon then lifted martial law, but the damage was done. Opposition parties, led by the DP, have submitted a motion to impeach the president. The martial law declaration was a shocking escalation of what critics have long seen as Yoon’s dictatorial approach to opposition.

South Asia

Nepal’s Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli is on his first trip to China during this stint in office – and his first bilateral visit to any country since assuming the top job. Oli is widely perceived as “pro-China,” and despite attempts to strike a nuanced foreign policy balance in his term thus far, he hasn’t been able to shake that perception. In this case, it may be a self-fulfilling prophecy; reports indicate that Oli sought to visit India first, but couldn’t secure an invite from New Delhi. Now he’s in China instead, which will spark more headlines about Beijing’s rising influence in South Asia.

Southeast Asia

This week, Vietnam’s National Assembly voted to approve the construction of a high-speed railway connecting the north and south of the country, a project estimated to cost $67 billion. The 1,541-kilometer rail line will connect the southern metropolis of Ho Chi Minh City to the capital Hanoi in the north. Running at speeds of up to 350 kilometers per hour, the train will cut the travel time between the two cities from 30 hours to just five hours and 20 minutes. While the high-speed railway has previously stalled due to concerns about its massive cost, the project seems to have attained a political significance for the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), whose chief To Lam recently pledged to launch the country into “an era of growth and resurgence.” Underscoring this point, the CPV said that it intends to fund the project itself, in a “spirit of independence and self-reliance.”

Central Asia

Last month a secret trial began in Tajikistan. On the dock are eight men, most in their 60s and 70s, and most with long careers in Tajikistan’s government who stand accused of an alleged coup plot. Details are thin – that’s the rub with a closed-door trial – but the alleged coup plot features every one of President Emomali Rahmon’s personal bêtes noires: The IRPT, Group 24, opposition politics, terrorists, and more.

Source: GenderStat.uz, 2023

The vast majority of homicides in Uzbekistan are committed by men, accounting for around 90% of cases.

Politics

Korean for martial law, which was declared by President Yoon for the first time since the end of the military dictatorship.