An article about the lawsuit on Germany's Junge Welt newspaper
According to the article, the consequences of the toxins continue lingering in Vietnam until now.
Stefan Brändle, the author of the article, described 79-year-old Nga as a woman with a robust appearance but suffering from many different severe diseases such as breast cancer, type-II diabetes, high blood pressure, alpha thalassemia and heart-related diseases.
When she was exposed to AO/dioxin in 1966, Nga did not know about the fatal effects of the chemical that can be transmitted to later generations. But when she gave birth to her first child in 1969, the baby girl lived only 17 months and died due to respiratory and skin problems. Her two other daughters are still alive but have poor health conditions, and a grand-daughter of Nga suffers from heart diseases, said the Vietnam News Agency.
From 1961 to 1971, the US army sprayed 80 million litres of herbicides and defoliants, 46 million litres of which were AO produced by many companies, including the US chemical manufacturer Monsanto, which is now part of the Bayer Group, in order to defoliate entire forests and track down Vietnamese soldiers, said the article.
Agent Orange, which also contains the poison dioxin and directly attacks the genetic make-up, has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, and diseases among millions of people in Vietnam.
According to the author, even today, in the fourth generation after the end of the war, around 6,000 babies with deformities and serious diseases are born in Vietnam every year.
In 1984, US veterans who participated in the Vietnam war were paid almost 180 million USD in compensation. However, Vietnamese AO victims have been paid nothing.
Nga, therefore, filed a lawsuit at Evry, France, where she now lives, against 14 chemical giants such as Monsanto or Dow Chemical in 2004. The ruling is expected to be issued on May 10.
After that day, the defendants can appeal and that would be a disadvantage for Nga, as doctors said that the 79-year-old doesn't have much time left, the newspaper said.
However, the Vietnamese French woman is still not discouraged, as she wants to expand the lawsuit to include the offense of “ecocide” - a crime against nature. The French National Assembly included the term in its new climate law at the beginning of May, the article noted./.