Diane Wilson arrested for protesting at DOW plant in Texas

Protester hauled off tower
By TONY FREEMANTLE
Copyright 2002 Houston Chronicle
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/topstory/1548945

SEADRIFT -- In a major breach of security, a 53-year-old Seadrift environmentalist climbed a tower at the Union Carbide Corp. plant this morning and chained herself to the structure, seeking justice for the victims of a 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal, India.

This afternoon, however, Brazoria County law officers forcibly removed her and arrested her.

Diane Wilson, a former shrimper who had just completed a 30-day hunger strike outside the plant, had scaled a 5-foot-high fence topped with barbed-wire just before dawn to gain access to the facility just north of here.

After climbing the tower and chaining herself down, Wilson unfurled a banner accusing the Dow Chemical Co., now the parent company of Union Carbide, of being responsible for the explosion of Union Carbide's Bhopal plant that killed 3,849 people.

Wilson refused to come down when plant workers raised a basket up to her, so she was taken by force.

Union Carbide officials said they were taking the breach of their security seriously. They downplayed the potential risk of someone gaining access to that particular unit of the plant since it was a air separation unit and does not contain volatile substance.

Bart Gliatta, who is responsible for environmental health and safety at the plant, said company security personnel saw some cars near the plant's perimeter about 5:30 a.m. and investigated but did not find Wilson.

"This is a serious issue," Gliatta said, "and we are treating it as such. We are investigating to find out how she got in."

Protesters and supporters of the Bhopal victims have been staging hunger strikes and other actions around the world to protest moves by the Indian government to reduce criminal manslaughter charges against Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson to misdemeanor negligence charges.