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Vietnam the Dioxin Children
(VNED)
,
helps children with disabilities
caused by AGENT ORANGE

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Read on the NYT : The Victims of Agent Orange the U.S. Has Never Acknowledged

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Written by vned
Category: Publications AO/Dioxin
Published: 24 March 2021
Hits: 51
Read on The New York Times 
 
nytimes.com

The Victims of Agent Orange the U.S. Has Never Acknowledged

George Black, Christopher Anderson
30-38 minutes

Feature

America has never taken responsibility for spraying the herbicide over Laos during the Vietnam War. But generations of ethnic minorities have endured the consequences.

Photographs by Christopher Anderson
  • Published March 16, 2021Updated March 22, 2021

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The article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

It was a blazing-hot morning in October 2019 on the old Ho Chi Minh Trail, an intricate web of truck roads and secret paths that wove its way across the densely forested and mountainous border between Vietnam and Laos. Susan Hammond, Jacquelyn Chagnon and Niphaphone Sengthong forded a rocky stream along the trail and came to a village of about 400 people called Labeng-Khok, once the site of a logistics base inside Laos used by the North Vietnamese Army to infiltrate troops into the South. In one of the bamboo-and-thatch stilt houses, the ladder to the living quarters was made from metal tubes that formerly held American cluster bombs. The family had a 4-year-old boy named Suk, who had difficulty sitting, standing and walking — one of three children in the extended family with birth defects. A cousin was born mute and did not learn to walk until he was 7. A third child, a girl, died at the age of 2. “That one could not sit up,” their great-uncle said. “The whole body was soft, as if there were no bones.” The women added Suk to the list of people with disabilities they have compiled on their intermittent treks through Laos’s sparsely populated border districts.

Hammond, Chagnon and Sengthong make up the core of the staff of a nongovernmental organization called the War Legacies Project. Hammond, a self-described Army brat whose father was a senior military officer in the war in Vietnam, founded the group in 2008. Chagnon, who is almost a generation older, was one of the first foreigners allowed to work in Laos after the conflict, representing a Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee. Sengthong, a retired schoolteacher who is Chagnon’s neighbor in the country’s capital, Vientiane, is responsible for the record-keeping and local coordination.

The main focus of the War Legacies Project is to document the long-term effects of the defoliant known as Agent Orange and provide humanitarian aid to its victims. Named for the colored stripe painted on its barrels, Agent Orange — best known for its widespread use by the U.S. military to clear vegetation during the Vietnam War — is notorious for being laced with a chemical contaminant called 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin, or TCDD, regarded as one of the most toxic substances ever created.

The use of the herbicide in the neutral nation of Laos by the United States — secretly, illegally and in large amounts — remains one of the last untold stories of the American war in Southeast Asia. Decades later, even in official military records, the spraying of Laos is mentioned only in passing. When the Air Force in 1982 finally released its partially redacted official history of the defoliation campaign, Operation Ranch Hand, the three pages on Laos attracted almost no attention, other than a statement from Gen. William Westmoreland, a former commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, that he knew nothing about it — although it was he who ordered it in the first place. Laos remained a forgotten footnote to a lost war. To those who followed the conflict’s aftermath intimately, this was hardly surprising. Only in the last two decades has the United States finally acknowledged and taken responsibility for the legacy of Agent Orange in Vietnam, committing hundreds of millions of dollars to aiding the victims and cleaning up the worst-contaminated hot spots there.

While records of spraying operations inside Laos exist, the extent to which the U.S. military broke international agreements has never been fully documented, until now. An in-depth, monthslong review of old Air Force records, including details of hundreds of spraying flights, as well as interviews with many residents of villages along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, reveals that, at a conservative estimate, at least 600,000 gallons of herbicides rained down on the ostensibly neutral nation during the war.

Read more: Read on the NYT : The Victims of Agent Orange the U.S. Has Never Acknowledged

Loving Aunt Ta Thi Thinh!

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Written by vned
Category: Uncategorised
Published: 27 May 2019
Hits: 2361

Dear friends in Vietnam and France,
Original text in vietnamese

Through the days of constant struggle with that dangerous illnesses, our aunt Thinh, our dear friend, member of our large family, our association "Vietnam the Dioxin Children", aunt Thinh is now gone.
Ms Ta Thi Thinh's funeral was held at 9h15 'on May 22, 2019, at the funeral home of Thanh Nhan Hospital, then was taken to the Thanh Tri crématorium, in the presence of family, friends, colleagues, members of VNED in Hanoi, and representatives of local agencies serving dioxin victims, who have known Ms. Thinh for many years.
Ms Ta Thi Thinh was born on August 12, 1942, originally from Ninh Binh province. After graduating at the Trung Vuong High School, she was sent to the Soviet Union to study at Moscow University of Culture, where she was graduated with a Honourable Mention. In 1966, she returned to Vietnam and works at the National Library of Science and Technology as the Head of the Book management Bureau, and has been with this place for more than 32 years, until her retirement.
Beside she was a visiting lecturer at many universities in the country and was loved and respected by many generations of students.
Since retirement, she gets involved in the Association "Vietnam les Enfants de la Dioxine - VNED" (Vietnam the Dioxin Children) a french NGO helping Agent Orange victims, since the beginning, until her last breath. Among us, all those who have met, and worked with Aunt Thinh, surely will not forget the image of her, a small woman but full of bravery, dignity, independence, witty optimistic, always living and working with enthusiasm
Ms Thinh is fluent in French and Russian, living with a rich poetic soul.
We not only lose a loved one, a loving friend, but also a model with a golden heart, full of faith and hope for the good in this life.
Nearly 20 years of VNED activities, she has never been afraid of long buses trips across villages, provinces and northern cities to visit families of Agent Orange victims.
I still remember when visiting the families in Bac Ninh province, people are looking to hear from her, and ask me to bring her some presents, black beans, squash fruit ..., and recommend me to tell her "this is a little home-grown gift", without that she never accept.
These last time when lying on a hospital bed, her eyes never stopped shining, she said once, "Waiting for hope!", she made me feel her optimistic spirit and energy spread throughout the space.
She never retreat from difficulties and her belief in life is the most wonderful thing we will never forget.
Aunt, your image will always accompany us in our activities for VNED and will remain in our hearts. Rest and watch from there, will you!

"Living in life, you need a heart. For what, do you know sweat heart? For let it gone with the wind…." (In Trinh Cong Son's song)

Nguyen Minh Hanh
(The VNED-Hanoi Team)

Vietnam demands Monsanto pay victims of US Agent Orange chemical warfare

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Written by Dung Nguyen
Category: Publications AO/Dioxin
Published: 20 April 2019
Hits: 1457

Press review : Article published on RT :

https://www.rt.com/news/457053-vietnam-agent-orange-justice-monsanto/

‘Where is justice?’ Vietnam demands Monsanto pay victims of US Agent Orange chemical warfare

Vietnam is again seeking justice for the victims of Agent Orange, inspired by the multimillion-dollar verdicts against Monsanto in California. The biotech firm had supplied the US military with the chemical during the Vietnam War.

Read more: Vietnam demands Monsanto pay victims of US Agent Orange chemical warfare

Our friend Ta Thi Thinh is gone.

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Written by vned
Category: Uncategorised
Published: 19 May 2019
Hits: 1905

Thinh en 2018We are deeply saddened to announce the death of our friend and collaborator TA Thi Thinh on May 19, 2019, in Hanoi, after a long illness with courage and dignity.
Thinh had been there since the creation of VNED in 2001, as representative of the association in North Vietnam, and official representative of the association for the local authorities. She is loved by all of us, her French friends in the association, for her kindness, her availability, her gift of self and her integrity, she is loved by the beneficiary families for her great capacity of listening and her empathy .
Thinh was the soul of VNED, it will leave a void hard to fill in our hearts.
Loan (for VNED)

Documentary on Agent Orange to be screened in America soon

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Written by Dung Nguyen
Category: Publications AO/Dioxin
Published: 20 December 2018
Hits: 1737

Press review :

Documentary on Agent Orange to be screened in America

HÀ NỘI — The documentary Inside This Peace featuring a forgotten victim of Agent Orange living in Việt Nam will be available on Vimeo On Demand across America this Christmas. 

The documentary by America-based producer and director Linh Nga tells the story of Thoa, a forgotten victim of Agent Orange in Việt Nam, whose younger brother is also an AO victim. Thoa has “scary skin with huge black patches, numerous lumps and hair all over her body”. The lumps are filled with fluid and can’t be drained.

For decades, Thoa’s parents have been looking for Government help.

“Peace is defined as ‘freedom from the cessation of war and violence’ and peace in our documentary is just like their daily life after the war and the legacy of war that we have to face now,"  Linh Nga said on a talkshow. 

Linh Nga first met Thoa when she was 13 years old when they sat next to each other on a plane on the way to a charity performance in the central city of Đà Nẵng.

The hairs on Thoa’s fingers were very prickly. When she moved her arm next to Linh Nga’s, it was almost painful, but not the same pain she felt for her.

"That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make a documentary about her and do something for Thoa and people like her," Linh Nga said. 

Linh Nga won the TV Best Series award for her Xuôi Ngược Đường Trần (In The Shadow Of Life) movie at the Vietnamese International Film Festival in 2003. 

Please read more here

 

 

  1. Vietnam Veterans and Agent Orange Exposure – New Report
  2. Hypertension Linked to Agent Orange
  3. The Children of Orange
  4. Hommage à Jean Bloquaux

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Day after day...
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...with the children...(2020)

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Vietnam Dioxin Gruppe
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French NGO humanitarian association (loi 1901),
registered at the "prefecture du Val-de-Marne" June 26 2001,
registered under the number 2287 (JO Jul 28 2001)
new numbering : W94100474

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