Vietnam's Foreign Ministry said this week that Monsanto and other US-based companies must pay damages to the victims of Agent Orange, a chemical substance which contains extremely high levels of toxic dioxin.
Analysts have described the plea as a ‘last resort' for helping Vietnamese citizens who are, to this very day, still suffering the consequences of Agent Orange's deployment. Genetic mutations and birth defects in particular still occur as a result of exposure amongst past generations to the chemical weapon's toxins, almost 50 years after the end of the war.
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According to reports, the residual dioxins are still highly present in Vietnam's ecological landscape. Toxins are found in soil and water, and are thought to be responsible even today for the ongoing poisoning of marine life.
A campaign group that calls itself ‘The Vietnamese Association of Victims of Agent Orange' (VAVA) claims that upward of 4.8 million people were exposed to the weapon's toxicity, causing disease amongst at least 3 million of them. Today, around 800,000 Vietnamese citizens receive assistance for illness and disabilities allegedly linked to exposure to the deadly chemical weapon.
From approximately the years 1961 to 1971, Washington dropped over 75 million liters of Agent Orange and other herbicides on the territory of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. The military tactic was, quite literally, a scorched-earth policy aimed at leveling all forestland to prevent the Northern Vietnamese Vietcong fighters from being able to hide during combat.
Research into the subsequent destruction caused found that more than 2 million hectares of forestland and 200,000 hectares of crops were pulverized.
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Vietnam is yet to receive what it deems as satisfactory reparations for the massive destruction caused by Agent Orange. In recent years, Hanoi has even filed claims against Monsanto as an individual company, rather than a world court state-to-state filing against the US in what many saw, and still see, as an effort to preserve relations with Washington. Yet, such diplomatic overtures appear to have failed in helping along any court case.
The last major effort made by Vietnam to extract compensation from Monsanto and related companies was in 2005. At that time, a federal judge in Brooklyn dismissed a damage suit filed on behalf of millions of Vietnamese who charged American companies with committing war crimes by supplying the military with Agent Orange. The American judge, however, dismissed the claims, saying that the plaintiffs were unable to prove two key points: firstly that Monsanto had violated a ban on the sale of toxic weapons, and secondly, a connection between any chemical weapon and the health problems being experienced.
Vietnam's latest demand comes hot on the heels of the recent decision by a US jury to order Monsanto to pay damages to an American cancer patient who claims that his terminal illness was caused by prolonged exposure to a weed killer called ‘Roundup,' produced by the same company.
Some are now hoping that if it can be proven that Roundup and Agent Orange contain similar toxins then maybe this time, Vietnam might stand a chance in the courts.