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08/07/2008
François Desriaux, a driving force behind the French asbestos victim support group ANDEVA will shortly be appearing in the dock of the Paris regional lower criminal court to answer a prosecution brought against him by the Chrysotile Institute for “public criminal libel of a private individual”. Canada’s main asbestos lobby argues that François Desriaux described the Asbestos Institute on the ANDEVA website as “a body highly active in propaganda and subornation”. The trial is likely to take place in autumn 2008.
The Asbestos Institute was set up in 1984, and later renamed the Chrysotile Institute after the form of asbestos from the serpentine group. It gets Canadian government funding which enables it to do things that include running misinformation campaigns to fend off a world asbestos ban. The Institute provided technical and financial assistance for the formation of ten national associations linking together asbestos producers. From 1984 to 2007, it received over $19 million Canadian in federal government subsidies. It also receives funding from Quebec Province, where Canada’s last working asbestos mines are situated.
It takes some gall to attack the 17 000 sufferers of diseases caused by asbestos who are grouped together in ANDEVA, and to brand their condemnation of those who are responsible for their suffering and their accomplices as libel!
The Chrysotile Institute’s official purpose is to promote the safe use of asbestos, but it has never joined in any criminal prosecution of bosses who have caused the deaths of workers by exposing them to asbestos. To the contrary, it divides its activities between promoting asbestos and harassing the industry’s opponents through the media, politics and the law.
Examples that spring to mind are the actions against Brazilian labour inspector Fernanda Giannasi; a surprisingly aggressive letter against Chile’s current President Michelle Bachelet when she was the serving Health Minister. It is not the first time that the Chrysotile Institute has set about freedom of speech. In 2005, it complained to the Canadian television ombudsman about a broadcast report on asbestos. The complaint was rejected, with the ombudsman finding that the facts mentioned in the report were not disputed.
Political responsibility for these repeated attacks attaches to the Canadian authorities, which subsidize the asbestos lobby. Having lost the WTO case against the asbestos ban in France, the Canadian government is going all out to stifle action for a world ban on this killer mineral.
Canada produced about 60 million tonnes of asbestos in the 20th century. That is just over one third of total world production. It therefore bears a big share of responsibility for what was and in many countries still is the mass crime of asbestos use. Canadian asbestos exports are likely implicated in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The Canadian authorities are not blind to the dangers of asbestos. They have slashed its use in their own country. Almost the entire output is for export, mainly to countries where working conditions are not conducive to effective prevention - chiefly India, Thailand and Indonesia.
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