“I will not stop”: at 81, the Franco-Vietnamese Tran To Nga continues to fight to bring justice to the victims of Agent Orange in Vietnam, this ultra-toxic herbicide sprayed during the war.
This French Indochina-born former journalist is suing fourteen multinational corporations, including giants Bayer-Monsanto and Dow Chemical, in French courts for producing and selling Agent Orange – so called because of the color of the cans it was stored in.
Rejected for the first time in May 2021, she appealed: “I will not stop. I will be on the side of the victims until my last breath”, she says in an interview in Vietnamese with AFP, during a visit to Hanoi from Paris where she lives.
“It will be my last fight, and the most difficult of all”, assures the activist, herself exposed to Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
Between 1962 and 1971, the US military sprayed 68 million liters of Agent Orange on fields and forests to prevent the advance of Communist guerrillas.
Cancers, malformations in children, destruction of vegetation, soil pollution… The health consequences of the dioxin contained in agent orange are still being felt today.
But like many other victims, Tran To Nga did not at first understand the risks of exposure to the powerful defoliant.
Then in her twenties, she was stationed at the Cu Chi military base (south), controlled by the Communist North, as a trainee journalist.
One day, coming out of an underground shelter, she was “covered in wet powder from an American plane.”
“I only took a shower after I was told it was weedkiller all over my body. Then I forgot everything ‘what had happened,’ she explains .
But a year after the exposure, in 1968, Ms. Tran gave birth to her first child, who had a congenital heart defect. The girl only survived 17 months.
She later had two more daughters – the last was born in 1974 in a prison in the pro-American South, where the young woman was incarcerated for alleged ties to communist officials.
“For a long time, I blamed myself for being a bad mother, for having given birth to a sick baby and for not having been able to save him,” breathes Ms. Tran, now a grandmother.
A school principal in Ho Chi Minh City after the war, Ms Tran only realized decades later that her daughter had been a victim of Agent Orange, after meeting veterans and their disabled children.
Vietnam’s Agent Orange Victims Association says 4.8 million people were directly exposed. More than three million of them developed health problems.
The US Department of Veterans Affairs admits that cancers, diabetes and certain birth defects may be linked to Agent Orange, although there is no scientific evidence.
Ms. Tran says she suffers from pathologies characteristic of exposure to this herbicide, in this case type 2 diabetes. She has also had two cases of tuberculosis and cancer.
“I consider Agent Orange to be the ancestor of all sorts of other substances that have destroyed the environment,” said this trained chemist who became an intermediary between donors in France and victims in Vietnam.
On the outskirts of Hanoi, Ms. Tran met Nga Vuong Thi Quyen at an Agent Orange victim support facility.
The 34-year-old woman was born with a spinal deformity after her father, a soldier, was exposed to dioxin during the war.
So far, only veterans from the United States and other countries involved in the conflict have received Agent Orange compensation.
In May 2021, the court of Evry (near Paris) rejected his requests, considering that the companies assigned had acted on the orders of the American State, and that they therefore could not be judged by a French court.
Tran To Nga assures that she refused “a lot of money” from the multinationals to avoid a lawsuit. And launched a crowdfunding campaign in view of the appeal trial, scheduled for 2024.
“The fight to obtain justice for the victims of Agent Orange will last a long time. But I think I have chosen the right path,” she said.
“I have no hatred for the government or the American people. Only those who have caused devastation and pain should pay for what they have done,” she said.
12/06/2023 10:14:25 – Hanoi (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
