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Cartoonist:
Khalil Bendib
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Tran Anh Kiet's feet, hands and
limbs are twisted and deformed. He is 21 years old, but trapped inside a body
that appears to belong to a 15 year old with a mental age of around six. He
has to be spoon-fed and writhes often in evident frustration. All his
attempts at speech are confined to plaintive and pitiful grunts.
In Kiet's small community in Cu Chi district, about 45 kilometers from Ho
Chi Minh city, south
Vietnam, his
story is all too common - indeed the villagers have a name for young people
like him: Agent Orange babies.
Some 79 million liters of Agent Orange herbicides were dropped on the jungles
of Vietnam
from 1961-1971 in an attempt to defoliate the rainforest and deny any cover
for the VietCong guerilla forces resisting the United
States occupation of Vietnam.
Today in Vietnam
there are 150,000 other children like Kiet, whose parents allege their birth
defects are the result of exposure to Agent Orange during the war, or the
consumption of dioxin-contaminated food and water since 1975.
The Vietnamese government estimates that three million Vietnamese were exposed
to these chemicals during the war, and that at least 800,000 suffer serious
health problems today as a result.
In February 2004, the newly -formed Vietnamese Association of Victims of
Agent Orange (VAVA) filed a class action law suit in a New York court,
against Monsanto and 36 other manufacturers of the poisonous chemical.
The plaintiffs and their lawyers deliberately chose the very same court that
had previously presided over the only previous lawsuit brought against Agent
Orange manufacturers, by US
war veterans. Indeed, the same judge - Jack Weinstein - is currently hearing
pre-trail arguments in the case.
The original lawsuit was settled in 1984, when seven American chemical
companies paid out $180 million to 291,000 people over a period of 12 years.
The settlement was reached after Weinstein persuaded the companies to buy
themselves out of protracted litigation. But the chemical companies refused
to accept liability, as part of the settlement, claiming the science still
does not prove that Agent Orange was responsible for any of the medical
horrors its name has long brought to mind.
Babies with two heads
The first generation of victims were the war veterans and farmers, who lived
off land exposed to the chemical clouds during the war. The second generation of victims were their sons and daughters, and
today their children, the third generation, are also suffering similar health
problems as their parents and grandparents.
Inside the Tu Du hospital in Saigon, grotesque birth
defects - babies born with two heads, other with short stumps in place of
arms or legs - are a routine sight. Dr Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan, the specialist
in coping with the new-born victims also keeps a padlocked room of
well-preserved horrors - jars of deformed fetuses that never made it as
evidence.
"You can't imagine the state of these children in Can Gie district, they
can't speak, they are paralyzed, they have only the life of a
vegetable," says Nguyen Phuoc Hoang, a researcher who used to work for
the Environment Committee of Ho Chi Minh city.
The third generation of casualties includes those who live in the vicinity of
former US
military bases such as Bien Hoa. Agent Orange was stored in large quantities
on these military bases.
Dr Arnold Schecter, a leading expert in dioxin contamination in the US,
sampled the soil there in 2003,and found it to
contained dioxin levels that were 180 million times above the safe level set
by the US
environmental protection agency. It is known as one of some 30 hotspots an
environmental disaster area in urgent need of decontamination. Yet almost 30
years after the war nothing has been done about it.
More compelling scientific evidence was unearthed by a five year study
conducted in the late-1990s by a Canadian environmental firm, Hatfield Consultants,
working in collaboration with Vietnamese scientists that focused
international attention on the extent of the contamination.
Hatfield took extensive samples from soil, water, animals, and people, and
tested for minute concentrations of the active poisons in Agent Orange near
the Ho Chi Minh Trail just south of Quang Tri province, in the A Luoi
valley.In 2002 the results were made public. The researchers found "a
consistent pattern of food-chain contamination by Agent Orange dioxin...in the
air base area, which included soils, fishpond sediment, cultured fish, ducks,
and humans."
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Adding Insult to Injury
In June 2001 Monsanto was accused by farmers of Ninh Thuan province of
pressuring them to use genetically modified seeds that resulted in corn and
maize crop failures and economic ruin.
Monsanto representatives responded with demands and threats urging the
authorities to take action against by the state-run Nguoi Lao Dong
newspaper (The New Worker) in Saigon, which printed a
story about the farmers complaints, based on
research done by social scientist Bui Dac Hai.
Agent Orange activists were outraged that Monsanto had returned to haunt Vietnam. Former wartime
ambassador Madame Nguyen Ngoc Dung, told CorpWatch: "We have strongly
criticized officials responsible for granting a license" (to
Monsanto).
The activists say that Monsanto has been assiduously cultivating
technocrats inside the ministries of trade, investment and planning, who
prefer to put the war totally behind them and believe that any campaign
over Agent Orange undermines good trading relations with the US, and is
therefore bad for business.
Another faction of government officials, which includes including prime
minister Pham Van Khai, backed by the war veterans argue that economic
concerns must be tempered with humanitarian respect for the victims and
that Monsanto should be held accountable for their suffering.
The success of the Agent Orange victims campaign
has caused major differences between the two factions. One communist party
intellectual says he believes that "the humanitarian faction in the
party is gaining momentum and the chances of driving Monsanto out of Ho Chi Minh
city are improving."
A Monsanto spokesperson told CorpWatch that the company has been selling
four varieties of hybrid corn seed since 1995 in addition to herbicides
including Roundup and Lasso brands but that "Monsanto has no
biotechnology crops on the market there."
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Campaign picks up steam
The Agent Orange cause has been picking up steam in the last few years.
Vietnam Red Cross had launched a humanitarian appeal in 1998 for special
support for its Agent Orange Fund. In January 2004 a
activist campaign was launched in Hanoi
with the setting up of Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange.
Another recently-formed non-profit, the Peace and Development Foundation,
headed by former foreign minister of South Vietnam, Madame Nguyen Thi Binh,
is part of a highly successful campaign to mobilize people at home and abroad
in support of Vietnamese lawsuit and the victims demand for justice and
compensation.
Vietnam Television has just broadcast a new documentary on the subject. The
government has set aside August 10th as an official commemoration 'Agent
Orange Day' in support of the victims. (August 10th 1961 was the date that
the very first cargo of Agent Orange defoliant was dropped on the forest
around Kontum in the Central highlands). On September 10th 2004, Thanh Nien newspaper reported the
foreign ministry had expressed support for the Agent Orange plaintiffs.
No such gesture has been made on the other side of the Pacific, despite pleas
for support. When President Bill Clinton visited Hanoi
four years ago, Vietnamese president Tran Duc Long made an appeal to the US
'to acknowledge its responsibility to de-mine, de-toxify former military
bases and provide assistance to Agent Orange victims." Almost 30 years
after the war no such acknowledgement has been made - all Washington
has offered is funding for scientific conferences and further research.
Former director of Vietnam Red Cross,Dr Nguyen Trong
Nhan a tireless campaigner and vice-president of the the Agent Orange Victims
Association) is sadly disappointed by the US
response to the humanitarian crisis that Vietnam
is facing. "Vietnam
can't solve the problem on its own. Hanoi
helped the US
military to track down remains of MIAs (Missing in Action),and
we asked them to reciprocate with humanitarian aid for victims of Agent
Orange," he says.
Companies respond
Jill Montgomery, a spokesperson for Monsanto, responded to a request for
comment from CorpWatch by email: "There were seven manufacturers who
were required to make Agent Orange
at the specific request of the US
government for military use. Production ended more than 30 years ago. The
government of Vietnam
resolved its claims as part of the treaties that ended the war and normalized
relations with the United States."
"We are sympathetic with people who believe they have been injured and
understand their concern to find the cause, but reliable scientific evidence
indicates that Agent Orange is not the cause of serious long-term health
effects."
Co-defendant Dow Chemical, Monsanto's parent company, has also issued a
statement that reads: "We believe that it is the role of the US
government and the government of Vietnam
to resolve any issues related to wartime activities."
But Tran Anh Loi ,the father of Agent Orange victim
Tran Anh Kiet, says: "Monsanto must pay compensation for their crimes.
They have caused this tragedy. I think the government should raise their
voice and make the payment a condition before Monsanto can do business in
Vietnam.¨
"American victims of the Agent Orange will get up to $1500 a month.
However most war veterans and Vietnamese families have only received around
85,000 Dong a month (just over $5) in government support for each disabled
child. However in response to the public campaign, Hanoi
has increased compensation benefits in July to 300,000 Dong a month (nearly
$20 a month)."
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