Vietnam Agent Orange victims further campaign in Washington

A group of Vietnamese victims of the Agent Orange met with US activists in Washington DC Saturday, calling for support in their current lawsuit against the manufacturers of the toxic defoliant.

The victims, Dang Hong Nhut and Nguyen Si Hai, told the US audience about what it’s like to live with the effects of Agent Orange, which contains extremely toxic byproducts known as dioxins, sprayed by US troops during the war.

Exposure to dioxins – one of the most toxic and stable chemicals know to man – has been associated with severe birth defects and certain rare cancers in humans.

The herbicide had affected not only the environment but also future generations, for both the Vietnamese people and US war veterans, said the two victims.

The US social activists at the meeting raised questions about the number of people affected by toxic chemicals in Vietnam and support from the government and charitable organizations in order to raise support for the victims.

At the meeting, Vice President of the Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims Nguyen Trong Nhan called for further support from the American public to bring justice to Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange in their lawsuit against 36 US chemical companies.

The victims have continued their campaign in Washington, DC until Monday and will leave for the North Carolina state and other major cities in the US.

Toxic herbicides

Some 110,000 tons of Agent Orange, named the color of the barrel it was transported in, was sprayed in Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. It has been blamed for severe damage to the environment and human health in Vietnam.

Vietnamese Agent Orange victims filed an appeal to the US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Sept. 30 following the rejection of their case against 37 US chemical producers last year.

The hearing will possibly be held in March 2006, a year after their hearing at the US federal court in Brooklyn, New York was dismissed, according to lawyers representing the Vietnamese plaintiffs.

In the hearing last March, US District Judge Jack B. Weinstein ruled there was no legal basis for the claims made by the some four million Vietnamese, who said that US chemical companies had committed war crimes by making Agent Orange for use during the Vietnam War.

The web page supporting the lawsuit, at http://www.petitiononline.com/AOVN/petition.html, has so far collected almost 692,000 signatures.

Judge Weinstein chaired a trial in 1984 where the seven major manufacturers of Agent Orange (Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Uniroyal, Hercules, Diamond Shamrock, Thompson Chemical, and T. H. Agriculture and Nutrition) agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $180 million in a class-action suit filed on behalf of Vietnam veterans.

The growing body of medical evidence and pressure from US veterans’ organizations prompted the US Congress to act in 1991 by passing a bill that provides disability payments to Vietnam veterans suffering from soft-tissue sarcomas and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Another bill was passed in 1996 to provide benefit to the children of Vietnam veterans born with spina bifida, an often severe birth defect that affects the nervous system.

(Source: VNA)

http://www.thanhniennews.com/politics/?catid=1&newsid=10858