VIETNAM:Legal battles continue for three million people affected by the dioxin deployed by US military
THE PRESENCE of and lust for American brands on the throbbing streets of Hanoi suggest the wounds of the Vietnam War have healed. Middle-class Vietnamese drive Fords to suburban malls for Gap gear and a KFC burger.
However, the consequences of the bitter 1969-1975 conflict remain a live political issue. A group that features prominently in the press here, the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange (VAVAO), a state-sponsored organisation that represents three million Vietnamese suffering from contact with the dioxin, is facing a crunch decision in its long-running legal battle with US chemicals companies.
Having earlier this year lost their case against Agent Orange makers, including Dow and Monsanto, in the Brooklyn District Court and again at the US Court of Appeal, the group will file an appeal to the Supreme Court in September. The two firms supplied the dioxin to the US government, which has claimed sovereign immunity from prosecution for dropping millions of litres of Agent Orange - named for the orange labels on drums containing the liquid - to strip jungle sheltering Vietcong.
Activists admit that hopes are slim for a victory in the highest court in the USA, but they are playing a long game. "We may not win at the Supreme Court but we've won in the court of public opinion," says a Hanoi-based VAVAO campaigner who prefers not to be named.
He says that despite recent economic success, Vietnam can't afford to compensate local Agent Orange victims, beyond $50 million a year in state pensions for victims - "it's not enough," says the veteran. The constraints of Vietnam relative poverty means victims need the chemical companies' money. "Vietnam has so many things to solve after the war and Agent Orange is just one of them." The US-based Vietnam Agent Orange Relief Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC) believes the chemical companies should contribute to an overall US government settlement with victims, which would include a clean-up of "hot spots" - areas where the soil remains poisoned.
Several prominent US legislators are on the campaign's side - "they see it as an issue of morality," explains Merle Ratner, co-coordinator of VAORRC. But given the scale of any payout, progress is unlikely to be swift: the US Congress has already squabbled over how to assign $3 million in humanitarian aid marked for clean-up.
To keep the pressure on, a delegation of Vietnamese women will arrive in New York on September 29th for a 10-city speaking tour. Among them is a 21-year-old computer science student, Tràn Thi Hoàn. She says she will tell public and TV audiences how she was born without two legs and with an atrophied hand. One of the many children of those affected during the war, she's learned English in the 12 years she has spent in a residential Agent Orange treatment centre in Ho Chi Minh.
Vietnamese sufferers have vociferous allies in a core of US army veterans who also suffered from exposure to the dioxin. Bernie Duff, a Michigan-born army medic who suffers skin disorders from his exposure in 1969 and 1970, raises funds and awareness for Vietnamese children born with related defects. The 60-year-old Irish-American went back to Vietnam in 2006 to confront the nightmares which have haunted him since his service time. Seeing the needs of fellow Agent Orange victims, he stayed, and this year walked from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City to raise money for a school caring for affected children.
Many of the Vietnam War victims have succumbed to cancer with "horrible defects", which in third-generation sufferers includes mangled bodies and over-sized heads, explains Ratner. Parents who give up their jobs to care for the children invariably slide into poverty.
Duff's goal is to build a training hospital in central Vietnam, easily accessible and staffed with doctors and specialised equipment for treating the Agent Orange victims. Though he is steering clear of the court case - "simply so we can appeal to all sides for help" - Duff is one of the veterans who took a class action suit against the chemical companies in the 1980s which ended in a lump sum payment (but rejection of responsibility) by the chemical companies. Most of the money was eaten up by legal fees. US veterans, however, got respite in 1991 with the passage of the Agent Orange Act, which deemed that Agent Orange illnesses could be considered service-related and covered by veteran health care.
Any compensation for the Vietnamese victims better be "substantial," says Merle Ratner. As an indication of the needs she points to the $30,000 being spent annually to treat each US veteran affected by Agent Orange. If the Supreme Court goes against them, VAORRC is preparing a Michael Moore-style campaign to target the chemical companies' well-advertised image as responsible multinational corporations. This may have some effect in throbbing Asian cities like Hanoi, a promised land for western multinationals. Dow and Monsanto have both opened offices in Vietnam.