Disabled children living near the site of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster - many in wheelchairs, others crawling - staged a protest Olympics Thursday targeting London 2012 sponsor Dow Chemical. About 100 children took part in the "Bhopal Special Olympics" at a muddy sports ground in the shadow of the Union Carbide factory responsible for the world's worst industrial accident.
The event, organised on the eve of Friday's Olympics opening ceremony, aimed to highlight the suffering of people in the central Indian city and the links to Dow Chemical, which took over fellow US group Union Carbide in 2001. "The children are born like this because of the gas," said Kesar Bai, a 45-year-old mother from a slum near the plant who believes that the disaster and its lingering impact caused her son Pratap's severe cerebral palsy.
She broke down in tears at the sight of Pratap, strapped into his wheelchair, being pushing around the makeshift sports track along with the gaggle of disabled participants, mostly aged between eight and 16. The disaster killed 8,000-10,000 people within the first three days, according to data from the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), but hundreds of thousands more suffer the consequences.
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