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A package arrived on the doorstep of Dow Chemical's offices in Slough, last Tuesday, but staff, warned that it was coming, had already evacuated the building. Though it was nothing more than bottled water, unlike Evian, Vittel or any other mineral brand, this hadn't come from some alpine spring. It was a macabre prank by a group of political activists.
Full of toxic quantities of nickel, chromium, lead and mercury, the water was bottled in Bhopal, the Indian city which, on 3 December 1984, suffered the worst industrial gas leak in history. There, with safety precautions neglected, water leaked into a tank containing a highly-toxic chemical called methyl isocyanate, and gas started billowing out of the Union Carbide pesticide factory.
Union Carbide refused even to reveal the chemical content of the lethal gas cocktail
Within 72 hours, as locals suffocated, vomited and went blind, some 8,000 people had died from exposure to the gas, a figure that has gradually grown to over 20,000 dead.
Now, 25 years on, both survivors and residents born after the disaster are still plagued by severe recurring ailments, from nervous disorders to pulmonary fibrosis and weakened immune systems. It is thought that the factory's toxic waste was leaching into the surrounding water supply for as long as ten years before the catastrophe occurred. Even today, high volumes of mercury have even been detected in the breast milk of mothers who live nearby.
For years, as Sathyu Sarangi, a leading activist from the Sambhavna Clinic in Bhopal highlights, Union Carbide refused even to reveal the exact chemical content in this lethal gas cocktail. At first, the company, which said that the accident was the result of sabotage by a disgruntled worker at the plant, had claimed it contained "nothing more potent than tear gas".
Dow Chemical, a Michigan-based multinational which employs some 46,000 people, bought Union Carbide, including its factory in Bhopal, for $10.3bn in stock and debt in 2001. Dow, which refuses to accept responsibility for the disaster, says the matter of compensation has been settled with the Indian government, and have offered locals no further renumeration.
This stubborn corporate defiance prompted Greenpeace to join forces with Bhopal activists in 2003, for a stunt in which they unloaded 250kg of toxic Bhopal waste into seven safely-contained barrels which they dumped outside Dow's European headquarters in the Netherlands.
That prank must have been the inspiration to the Yes Men, the people responsible for sending the highly-contaminated water with the macabre label to Dow's offices in Slough last week.
The Yes Men are a group of political activists led by author Jacques Servin and university professor Igor Vamos, with numerous assistants and aliases. They made their name
through various 'identity correction' stunts - impersonating the representatives of big business to promote their anti-globalisation, environmental and social justice messages.
Next month, their film The Yes Men Fix the World, is to be released in the UK. It will replay some of their greatest hits, such as the satirical website that they created in 2000, GWBush.com, which sought to highlight the hypocrisies inherent in Bush's real website during his presidential campaign. The exasperated President responded: "there ought to be limits to freedom".
On another occasion, at a conference in Canada, Yes Men posed as officials from oil giant Exxonmobil and told a hall full of oil executives that Vivoleum - a product which would use decomposing bodies to make fuel - could save the energy industry. The hoax executives persuaded their audience to light commemorative candles before they were rumbled and bundled out by the security guards.
The group frequently targets the World Trade Organisation, with stunts such as pretending to advocate slavery in Africa or using recycled industrial waste from developed countries to
feed starving Third World populations.
The group also admitted its part in distributing a fake but uncannily realistic looking edition of the New York Times last November, with the front-page headlines 'Iraq War Ends' and 'Nation Sets Its Sights On Building A Sane Economy'.
The Yes Men have capitalised on the realisation that stunts, hoaxes, gimmicks and jokes like these are increasingly the tactics that can gain widespread attention for a cause, and are probably now more effective than getting chained to a lamppost or going on hunger-strike.
They exploit the fact that performance protest is popular because it's non-violent, theatrical, photogenic, funny - and perhaps most importantly - memorable. So it divides the good guys very neatly from the bad guys, for both the media and the chattering public.
Moreover, the perpetrators find that their stunts can make a big impact. In 2004 on the 20th anniversary of Bhopal, one of the Yes Men appeared on BBC World, and watched by no fewer than 300 million people, impersonated a Dow spokesman.
Under the pseudonym Jude Finisterra, he pledged to sell off $12bn of company assets to fund medical aid for the victims of the tragedy, clean up the site and research hazardous chemicals.
Although the hoax was quickly discovered and Dow issued a press release denying the statement, they paid the price, literally. Within 23 minutes their share value plummeted by $2bn. 
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/50821,news,yes-men-join-the-campaign-justice-for-bhopal-victims-dow-chemical-union-carbide