Assistance to Agent Orange victims urged
nhandan.com.vn, July 10, 2004
The Presidium of the Vietnam Fatherland Front Central Committee today called on people of all walks of life nationwide as well as overseas Vietnamese to give a helping hand to Agent Orange victims.
The Presidium expressed its wholehearted support for the Agent Orange Victims' Association and the Agent Orange victims prosecuting the US producers of the defoliant chemicals that were used by the US troops during their aggressive war in Vietnam between 1961 and 1971.
The Presidium urged governments, international organisations, non-governmental organisations, scientists, lawyers and people of the world to fully understand the US army's chemical warfare tactics in Vietnam and its immediate and long lasting effects especially on children of the next generation of those who were exposed to the defoliant.
The Presidium called on them to take practical action to assist Vietnamese Agent Orange victims, to determine who was responsible for launching chemical warfare in Vietnam and support the on-going lawsuit against the US chemical companies by the Agent Orange Victims' Association and its members. (VNA)
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US public opinion continues to warn about Agent Orange's harmful impact
American people, especially Vietnam war veterans' relatives once again raised their voice about the lasting effects of Agent Orange on human health on the occasion of the inauguration ceremony of a granite plaque near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to honor veterans who died after their war service.
American veterans in the Vietnam war have continued to suffer premature deaths as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder and exposure to Agent Orange, said the manager of the plaque project.
"It will remind people that the price of war goes way beyond the battlefield," Ruth Coder Fitzgerald, founder of the grassroots movement behind the plaque, said during the ceremony at the memorial.
Her brother, John Coder, died in 1992 from non-Hodgkins lymphoma related to his exposure to Agent Orange as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam two decades earlier.
Americans will never know how many soldiers' lives were shortened by the Vietnam War, Fitzgerald said.
"No statistics have been kept on how many people died as a result of Agent Orange or post-traumatic stress disorder suicides," she said.
Between 1962 and 1971, US planes sprayed an estimated 21 million gallons of defoliant, mostly Agent Orange, over Vietnamese forests.
Many American and Vietnamese veterans have long blamed Agent Orange, which contains the deadly component dioxin, for a variety of illnesses, including cancer, diabetes and spina bifida. The US government claims there is no direct evidence linking dioxin with the illnesses. However, about 10,000 Vietnam War veterans in the United States receive disability benefits related to Agent Orange exposure.
The reason that representatives of Vietnam's Agent Orange's victims have claimed against some American chemical companies for damages caused by Agent Orange is legitimate, according to American public opinion. (VNA)
