October 2000

AGENT ORANGE LEAVES DESTRUCTIVE LEGACY IN VIETNAM

Twenty-five years after the end of the Vietnam War, the herbicide Agent Orange - sprayed by US planes during the war - is said to still affect a million victims in Vietnam today. Many of them are children born with serious deformities, as a result of their parents’ exposure to the chemical.

By Tran Dinh Thanh Lam

Ben Cau (Vietnam): ‘I don’t want my son to become a public attraction,’ Doan Ngoc Thanh says angrily, waving his hands to stop a photographer from taking a picture of his 10-year-old son.

The boy has an abnormally big head for his slender body, which lies in bed most of the time. Living in a small, remote village here in Ben Cau district, Tay Ninh province in south-west Vietnam, he is one of the many victims of the destructive legacy of the herbicide Agent Orange, sprayed by US planes during the Vietnam War.

Tay Ninh shares a 240-kilometre border with Cambodia, where fierce battles took place during the war and tens of thousands of tonnes of chemicals were dropped to destroy vegetation in the jungles to flush out communist fighters.

Doan Ngoc Thanh and his wife Nguyen Thi Lanh were both former guerillas at Ben Cau. Lanh’s blood was found to have high dioxin levels, while Thanh’s skin is pockmarked with scabs and scars. He too has high levels of dioxin.

But it is their son Thang (which means victory in Vietnamese), who was born on the 15^th anniversary of North Vietnam’s victory over US-backed South Vietnam, who bears the most severe impact of Agent Orange.

The dioxin, known to cause birth defects like malformed limbs and mental retardation, is said to affect a million victims in Vietnam today. Vietnamese officials also blame the chemical for causing cancer, immune-deficiency diseases and drug-resistant malaria.

Like many parents of children affected by Agent Orange, Thanh is tired of official delegations coming to ‘investigate’ their conditions. ‘They come and ask lots of questions, take lots of photos, make lots of promises,’ he says.

In the last 10 years, Thanh’s family has met more than a dozen ‘very important delegations’, including some foreigners. ‘They gave us nothing but promises,’ a disappointed Thanh complains. ‘I’d rather work on my plot of land to earn something than play host to all these guests who come only for political purposes.’

The Vietnam War ended 25 years ago, but still claims victims today through genetic mutations in the children of soldiers on both sides of the conflict who were exposed to Agent Orange.

Official figures say some 72 million litres of chemicals were dispersed over Vietnamese soil between 1961 and 1975. More than 40 million litres of these were deadly dioxins. As a result, more than 50,000 children have been born with serious deformities. A two-year examination of 41,153 children under the age of 15 at Ben Cau district alone found 242 cases of birth deformities.

The Vietnamese government, which has never officially asked for war reparations, in late 1998 began to sound out Washington about ‘cooperation to overcome the effects of the war’.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Red Cross has set up a fund for Agent Orange victims and put up ‘peace villages’ for them. Some Agent Orange-affected children get treatment and rehabilitation there, but those in isolated and rural areas, like Thang, have yet to receive help.

At Cam Lo district in central Quang Tri province, war veteran Tran Kien, whose two children live with the effects of Agent Orange, is also tired of waiting. He does not want to hear of delegations and the press anymore. Quang Tri lies just 30 kilometres north of the McNamara Line and 60 kilometres to the west of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the most heavily bombed area in the war.

The McNamara Line, named after the former US defence minister, refers to a border line that the American armed forces set up at the 17^th parallel separating North and South Vietnam.  The line was armed with electronic devices controlling  the  infiltration of communist soldiers to the South.

Today, more than 15,000 victims of Agent Orange live in this province that separated north and south during the war. A survey concluded in July showed that 2,000 people from Quang Tri have died from causes related to the chemical defoliant, and 5,240 children whose parents were exposed in some ways to the chemical have been born with deformities.

‘This makes us something of a showcase of the notorious “chat doc mau da cam” (toxic product with orange colour) victims,’ veteran Kien says sarcastically.

Kien’s family needs help for his children but is too proud to ask for public assistance. It was only when Dr Nguyen Thien Nhan, an expert in neurosurgery at the Hue Medical School, told him the purpose of his visit - to grant the family a small loan and to offer a wheelchair to his daughter - that Kien agreed to let the doctor and his companions meet his children.

Kien’s daughter, Tran Minh Nguyet, sits immobile, her stunted legs hidden by a long skirt. Her young brother is lost in his own world, oblivious to what is going on around him.

Dr Nhan, who has performed surgery on many children affected by Agent Orange, says he would try to do something for the boy. With funds from foreign donations, his Department of Genetics and Handicapped Children at the Hue Medical School offers loans of one million dong (around $70) to families of handicapped children. The no-interest loans are returned after three months and handed to other needy families.

Minh Nguyet’s face turned radiant as she sat on the wheelchair brought by Dr Nhan, one that had been donated by the Dutch. ‘Now I can help my father,’ she says. Like other children with disabilities, she wants desperately to be useful because she sees her parents toil day after day to earn a living.

‘I wish my daughter could lead a normal life,’ muses Le Thi Hoa, who also lives at Cam Lo. Her daughter Truong Thi Kieu Loan looks like a child despite her 20 years. Her deformed limbs and stunted growth set her apart from people her own age.

Hoa suffered several miscarriages and then had breast cancer. Her first child died after a series of epileptic seizures, and her second had the effects of Agent Orange. Three decades after the war, her blood dioxin levels are still 10 times the average.

‘I felt guilty before my daughter. If only she could lead a normal life,’ Hoa says.

At a ‘peace village’ in Hue, there are now around 300 Agent Orange-affected children from different parts of the country. Here, children accompanied by a family member go through a three-month course that teaches them to adapt to the world despite their difficulties. The family member will continue the rehabilitation process when the child goes home.

‘I will write a letter to my father,’ 12-year-old Nguyen Thi Be says. She has crippled hands, but social workers at the village have taught her how to write with her foot.

The effects of Agent Orange have been around for some time, but only recently did the press and the government begin a real campaign to support victims of the chemical.

On 23 February, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai decided that victims of Agent Orange and their children would receive monthly social welfare payments equivalent to $3.40 to $6.

In his visit to the capital Hanoi in August, the first by a US defence secretary since the war’s end, William Cohen offered help for Agent Orange victims. The US Environmental Protection Agency has affirmed that Agent Orange is a known carcinogen. - Third World Network Features/IPS

About the writer: Tran Dinh Thanh Lam is a correspondent for Inter Press Service, with whose permission the above article has been reprinted.

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