'Children of Chennai' demand eviction of Dow Chemical from mall

Chennai, Dec 3 (UNI) More than 150 children aged between 12 and 16 gathered at the central lobby of the Citi Centre mall here today and demanded the eviction of Dow Chemical, the new owner of Union Carbide, marking the 23rd anniversary of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster.

Dow Chemical has an office at the sixth floor of the mall. It had taken over the Union Carbide after the latter was declared an absconder by a criminal court in Bhopal in 1991 and refused to produce Union Carbide in the court.

''We are ashamed of India's stance of welcoming Dow to the country. We want to make it clear to the residents of Bhopal that the Children of Chennai will not sit idle when Dow tries to go about business as usual,'' said a spokesperson of the children, who organised ''Chennai for Bhopal''.

The children, many of whom were regular visitors of the mall, said they would boycott the mall and tell their friends to boycott till Dow was evicted from the premises.

The children also distributed pamphlets and alerted other shops in the mall that their neighbour Dow Chemical was a ''murderer'', charged with the murder of more than 8,000 people in the Bhopal disaster.

UNI