[Marxism] [Fwd: Vietnam disabled take case to the US]

[davidquarter@xxxxxxxxxxxx]

On 27 Feb 2005 at 8:39, Frank Hall-Bentick wrote:

Sent to disability-vn by Vern Weitzel <vern.weitzel@xxxxxxxx>


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12373518%255E2703,00.html

Vietnam disabled take case to the US

 Reuters

February 26, 2005

 HO CHI MINH CITY: It is a classroom full of sunlight in the southern 
Vietnamese city formerly
known as Saigon, with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck painted on the wall above 
several computers.

 But one pupil writes with a pencil between his toes, another cannot close her 
smiling mouth, and
the eldest of them, Tran Thi Hoan, wheels herself in and out because her legs 
have no calves.

 They are residents of Ho Chi Minh City's Peace Village 2, a state project set 
up in 1990 from a
ward of Tu Du Maternity Hospital to help disabled children, most of them 
victims of the Vietnam War
defoliant Agent Orange.

 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. More than 30 
companies are in their
sights, 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.

"I wish the suit will end with a victory so that the life of the victims like 
me could be materially
better," said Tran, a Year 10 student who came to the Peace Village from the 
central province of
Binh Thuan.

 Tran was born with no left palm. She said her younger brother died at birth 
because he had no
peritoneum, a membrane that lines the abdominal cavity.

 Peace Village head Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan said many of her patients had severe 
physical defects,
while others had chromosome disorders.

 "Most of their children were born and grew up in areas sprayed with the Agent 
Orange defoliant
during the war in Vietnam," said Dr Tan, also member of the Ho Chi Minh City's 
committee for Agent
Orange victims.

 US forces sprayed an estimated 90million litres of herbicides, including Agent 
Orange, in the
country 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 colour of its containers, is blamed for 
nightmarish birth defects in
Vietnam. Some babies were born with two heads or without eyes or arms.

 US and Australian veterans of the war have complained for years of a variety 
of health problems
from exposure to the herbicide. Dioxin, the toxic compound in Agent Orange, has 
been shown to cause
cancer, birth defects and organ dysfunction. Vietnam has 12 peace villages and 
500 clinics to help
its 3million Agent Orange victims.

 It is unclear whether the Vietnamese plaintiffs will succeed, but there are 
precedents in a 1984
agreement by Dow and Monsanto to pay $US180million to US veterans.

 An American lawyer representing the Vietnamese said those supporting the trial 
included US
veterans made sick by the chemical.









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