Rights and environmental groups condemn Blue Lady ruling

The NGO Platform on ship breaking, a global coalition of environmental, labour and human rights organisations, today condemned the Indian Supreme Courts September 11 decision to allow the demolition of the asbestos laden ocean liner SS Blue Lady (formerly SS France, SS Norway).

New Delhi, Sept.15 : The NGO Platform on ship breaking, a global coalition of environmental, labour and human rights organisations, today condemned the Indian Supreme Court's September 11 decision to allow the demolition of the asbestos laden ocean liner SS Blue Lady (formerly SS France, SS Norway).

This order provides exemption to Blue Lady by accepting a fait accompli that beaching is an irreversible process.

Since June of last year the Platform has provided indisputable evidence to the Indian Supreme court that the SS Blue Lady contains large amounts of hazardous materials that cannot be dealt with in a safe and environmentally sound manner on the beaches of Alang, India.

The platform has also unfailingly notified the Court that allowing the dismantling of this toxics laden cruise liner is in breach with India's own laws and commitments to international labour rights and environmental Conventions.

Despite this, the vessel was allowed to be beached on 15 August 2006 and will now be dismantled in Alang at the inevitable cost of workers' lives and environmental contamination.

Just days previous, on September 6th, the Supreme Court passed a judgement calling for all ships coming into India destined for breaking to be emptied of all hazardous materials before export to India.

Bangladesh already refused to dismantle the SS Blue Lady in February 2006 due to the large amounts of hazardous wastes on board.

"The Blue Lady ruling yesterday makes a mockery of the Indian judicial system and shows it has no respect for their own rulings, and international law, but likewise has officially condemned the ship breaking workers to death by accident or from occupational disease such as asbestosis and cancer," said Ingvild Jenssen, Platform coordinator.

"This ruling sends an unmistakable signal that India does not care about the welfare of its poorest most desperate workers," said Jenssen.

After the EU's legal judgement to have the ex-aircraft carrier Clemenceau returned in compliance with the international Basel Convention in 2006, the Alang industry and their associates in government have been desperate to give India's internationally condemned ship breaking industry a boost.

According to the Platform, the Blue Lady was illegally beached to achieve this objective and will now be illegally broken.

The Platform has made the court fully aware that India lacks the capacity to properly destroy PCBs in accordance with the UN Stockholm Convention.

It said that the "Court has consistently chosen to ignore the Platform's submissions to the SS Blue Lady case; they have also paid no attention to the concerns of 30.000 villagers living in the surrounding areas of the Alang yards."

"By continuing to protect it, rather than reform it, India will soon find itself as a pariah among nations, and ironically their dirty business will be denied by the rest of the global community and hence fade out," said Gopal Krishna, Platform representative in India.

The Platform is now considering its next legal steps and intends to challenge the ruling in national and global arenas.

ANI