A French legal battle offers an opportunity to revisit Canada’s role in chemical weapons use and whether Ottawa owes something to its Vietnamese victims.
On the weekend activists gathered
in Paris to support a court case launched by a woman exposed to Agent Orange in
Vietnam. The group Collectif Vietnam Dioxine is supporting French-Vietnamese
woman, Tran To Nga, who is suing 14 companies that sold the powerful defoliant
dioxin to the US military.
As a member of the Vietnamese
Communists (Viet Cong) Nga breathed Agent Orange in 1966. She told the
Associated Press “because of that, I lost one child due to heart defects. I
have two other daughters who were born with malformations. And my
grandchildren, too.” Spread between generations through breast milk, food and
the water supply, Agent Orange victims’ children and grandchildren are often
born with serious disabilities.
The toll the cancerous chemical
had on Vietnam is staggering. Some three million Vietnamese were exposed to a
defoliant that can cause immune deficiencies and damage one’s nervous system.
Between 1962 and 1971 US forces sprayed 11 million litres of Agent Orange in
southern Vietnam.
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