The domains of bhopal.net and bhopal.org were registered with the Internic on 10th June 1998, and this was when we discovered the bad news that bhopal.com had been grabbed on 23rd March 1997 by Union Carbide, which used it to punt its propaganda about sabotage and other long discredited PR ploys. bhopal.com to this day trots out this weary nonsense. We believe that Union Carbide has no right to this domain, as it claims to have no connection with Bhopal and .com denotes a commercial venture. It would have been more appropriate, and honester, to give its version of what happened in Bhopal on its own website. However...

For a couple of years nothing happened with the domains, but in 1999 webspace was purchased and the two sister sites came into being. bhopal.net has always been the campaiging website and bhopal.org featured the work of the Bhopal Medical Appeal and the Sambhavna Trust Clinic.

The first bhopal.net website was made in late 1999 by volunteers visiting Bhopal. This site was updated and underwent sporadic changes until the early summer of 2002 when the Bhopal survivors and their supporters launched a hunger-strike which turned into a rolling series of hunger-strikes right around the world, with more than 1,000 people taking part. The issue was a bid by the

Indian government of the day to water down the criminal charges outstanding in a Bhopal court since 1992 against Warren Anderson, the ex-Chairman of Union Carbide Corporation. The survivors won this battle, the end result of which was the criminal charges being reaffirmed by the judge, who ordered the government to proceed immediately with Anderson's extradition. That saga continues, as the extradition request has predictably been rejected by the US State Department.

The need for constant updates on the hunger-strikes turned bhopal.net into a news led site, often marked by quirky and irreverent reporting, which soon attracted a huge audience from all over the world with major news organisations checking regularly for updates. The news page became more sophisticated with individual stories being archived separately rather than in great runs as before.

The current site is an attempt to strike a new balance between information, news and action. Since June 2002 the site has been a project of the UK Campaign for Justice in Bhopal, which is a member of the International Campaign (ICJB), but maintains an independent editorial stance. Comment made by the editor may not necessarily be the official policy of the ICJB.