Paying for the Crime: Poison Legacy in Vietnam |
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
25402 readings
Justice News |
Saturday, 26 February 2005 02:24 |
Paying for the Crime: Poison Legacy in Vietnam
The Monsanto and Dow chemical corporations will be in court this week, finally answering for their part in the poisonous legacy they helped create with Agent Orange in Vietnam. - {lex} Vietnam Looks to Win Agent Orange Law Suit
On Monday, a New York court will begin hearing a lawsuit brought by more than 100 Vietnamese seeking compensation and a clean-up of contaminated areas from more than 30 firms, among them Dow Chemical Co and Monsanto Co, the largest makers of Agent Orange. It is the first time Vietnamese have sought legal redress since the Vietnam War ended in April 1975.
"Most of their children were born and grew up in areas sprayed with the Agent Orange defoliant during the war in Vietnam," Tan, also member of the Ho Chi Minh City's committee for Agent Orange victims, told Reuters Television. U.S. forces sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to deny food and jungle cover to the Vietnamese communists, but the chemical remained in the water and soil decades later. Agent Orange, named after the color of its containers, is blamed for nightmarish birth defects in Vietnam where babies appeared with two heads or without eyes or arms. U.S. veterans of the war have complained for years of a variety of health problems from exposure to the herbicide. Nguyen Duc, 25, a Peace Village patient who now works there and is among the Vietnamese bringing the New York suit, has a twin brother who has been confined to bed since the 1988 operation in which doctors separated the twins sharing two legs.
|
Last Updated on Saturday, 26 February 2005 02:24 |