[[link removed]]

VIETNAMESE AGENT ORANGE VICTIMS REMAIN UNCOMPENSATED. TLAIB AIMS TO
CHANGE THAT.  
[[link removed]]


 

Marjorie Cohn
April 30, 2025
Truthout
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Vietnamese and US descendants of those exposed to Agent Orange
continue to face diseases and congenital anomalies. Just compensation
for victims of Agent Orange is a moral imperative. _

Vietnam. 12/2004. Ho Chi Minh. Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, at
Tu Du Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital is pictured with a group of
handicapped children, most of them victims of Agent Orange, (photo by
Alexis Duclos)

 

Today marks 50 years since the end of the American War in Vietnam,
which killed an estimated 3.3 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of
thousands of Cambodians, tens of thousands of Laotians and more than
58,000 U.S. service members. But for many Vietnamese, Laotian and
Cambodian people; Vietnamese Americans; and U.S. Vietnam veterans and
their descendants, the impacts of the war never ended. They continue
to suffer the devastating consequences of Agent Orange, an herbicide
mixture used by the U.S. military that contained dioxin, the deadliest
chemical known to humankind.

The United States used Agent Orange as a weapon of war. From
1961-1971, the U.S. military sprayed toxins that contained large
quantities of dioxin in order to destroy food supplies and improve
visibility for the U.S. military by killing broad swathes of
vegetation throughout southern Vietnam. As a result, many people have
been born with congenital anomalies — disabling changes in the
formation of the spinal cord, limbs, heart, palate, and more. This
remains the largest deployment of herbicidal warfare in history.

In the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, the Nixon administration promised to
contribute $3 billion for compensation and postwar reconstruction of
Vietnam. But that promise remains unfulfilled. Although the U.S. has
funded the cleanup of two of the largest dioxin-contaminated
“hotspots” and there has been some remuneration for U.S. veterans,
there has been none for the Vietnamese people, the intended victims of
the deadly spraying.

LEGISLATIVE PACKAGE PROVIDES COMPENSATION FOR VIETNAMESE AND U.S.
VETERAN VICTIMS

In order to achieve justice for Agent Orange victims, Rep. Rashida
Tlaib (D-Michigan) introduced a legislative package on April 28. The
Agent Orange Relief Act of 2025
[[link removed]] provides
for medical care and related assistance for Vietnamese victims of
Agent Orange; provides additional environmental remediation for
hotspots; and orders a health assessment and assistance to affected
Vietnamese American communities.

Tlaib also introduced The Victims of Agent Orange Act of 2025
[[link removed]],
which provides benefits for children of male U.S. veterans who served
in Vietnam affected by congenital anomalies; these children are
unprotected by current law, which only covers congenital anomalies for
children of women veterans. The bill also supports greater research
into Agent Orange-related health issues and directs a health
assessment and provision of assistance for affected Vietnamese
American communities.

“Together, these two bills serve as an act of repair for the
profound harms caused by the United States’ use of Agent Orange and
other herbicides. Agent Orange exposure continues to negatively affect
the lives of American veterans, Vietnamese people, Vietnamese
Americans, and their children,” Tlaib stated in a press release
[[link removed]].
“The lives of many victims are cut short, and others live with
disease, disabilities, and pain, which are often untreated or
unrecognized. As we mark 50 years after the United States’
withdrawal from Vietnam, it is time to meet our moral and legal
obligations to heal the wounds inflicted by these atrocities.”

The legislative package is co-sponsored by Representatives André
Carson (D-Indiana), Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), Jerry Nadler (D-New
York), Lateefah Simon (D-California) and Shri Thanedar (D-Michigan).
The bills are endorsed by the Quincy Institute, Veterans For Peace,
Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign (VAORRC),
CommonDefense.us, Minnesota Peace Project and Action Corps.

Tlaib told _Truthout_, “For there to be any justice for the war
crimes committed in Vietnam, the United States must devote itself to
repair: by cleaning these ongoing Agent Orange contamination sites,
investing in the medical care of those affected, and removing
unexploded ordnance.”

VAORRC, for which I serve as co-coordinator, assisted Tlaib in
drafting the bills. In the congresswoman’s press release
[[link removed]],
Susan Schnall and Ngo Thanh Nhan, also co-coordinators of VAORRC,
thanked Tlaib for introducing this important legislation.

Schnall, president of Veterans For Peace, said:

The United States government used Agent Orange as an instrument of war
from 1961-1971 on Vietnam, its people, and American soldiers on the
ground. As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war
in Vietnam, we celebrate these two pieces of legislation that promote
healing for the American people and the Vietnamese people harmed, and
cleanup of the contaminated land in Vietnam.

Ngo stated: “The Southeast Asian communities have victims of Agent
Orange and were invisible to the public so far. These are very
important acts for our communities in the U.S. to support and it takes
great courage for Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib to show this example of
solidarity.”

Between 2,100,000 and 4,800,000 Vietnamese, Lao and Cambodian people,
and tens of thousands of Americans were exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin
during the spraying operations. Many other Vietnamese people were or
continue to be exposed to Agent Orange/dioxin through contact with the
environment and food that was contaminated. Many offspring of those
who were exposed have congenital anomalies, developmental
disabilities, and other diseases. Second, third and fourth generation
victims continue to suffer.

The Department of Veterans Affairs recognizes 19 diseases and
illnesses to be associated with the spraying and use of Agent Orange
by the U.S. military in Vietnam. They include AL Amyloidosis, bladder
cancer, chronic B-cell leukemia, chloracne, type 2 diabetes mellitus,
high blood pressure (hypertension), Hodgkin’s disease,
hypothyroidism, ischemic heart disease, monoclonal gammopathy of
undetermined significance (MGUS), multiple myeloma, Non-Hodgkin
Lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, Parkinsonism, acute and sub-acute
peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, prostate cancer,
respiratory cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas.

TESTIMONY OF AGENT ORANGE VICTIMS

In 2009, I served as one of seven judges from three continents on
the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the
Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange
[[link removed]] in Paris. The
panel heard two days of testimony from 27 witnesses, including
Vietnamese and U.S. veteran victims, journalists and scientists. Some
had visible disabilities due to their exposure to Agent Orange/dioxin.

Mai Giang Vu, who was exposed to Agent Orange while serving in the
Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals in the jungle.
His sons were unable to walk or function normally. Their limbs
“curled up” and they could only crawl. By the age of 18, they were
bedridden. One died at age 23, the other at 25.

Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese woman who worked in Vietnam as a war
correspondent. She was there when the U.S. military began spraying
chemical defoliants and a large cloud of the agent enveloped her.
Shortly after her daughter was born, the child’s skin began
shedding. She could not tolerate physical contact with anyone. The
child never grew. She remained 6.6 pounds – her birth weight –
until she died at age 17 months. Tran’s second daughter suffers from
alpha thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder rarely seen in Asia. Tran
saw a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many
children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds. There
are victims who have never stood up. They creep and barely lift their
heads.

Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo who served in the U.S.
Army in Vietnam. After refusing to serve a third tour, Mizo was
court-martialed, received a dishonorable discharge and spent
two-and-a-half years in prison. Before his death from Agent
Orange-related maladies, Mizo helped found the Friendship Village
where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment.

Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal Agent Orange article in Nature,
testified that “This is the largest unstudied environmental disaster
in the world.”

Although a Bionetics study from 1965 showed that dioxin caused many
birth defects in animal experiments, the U.S. military suppressed
those findings. The results of the study were leaked in 1969 but the
spraying of Agent Orange continued until 1971.

The tribunal found that “The damages caused to the land and forests,
water supply, and communities and the ecosystems can legitimately be
called an ecocide, as the forests and jungles in large parts of
southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded, and may either
never grow back or take 50 to 200 years to regenerate.”

THE UNFULFILLED U.S. PROMISE

In 2004, U.S. veteran and Vietnamese victims sued the chemical
companies that knowingly manufactured Agent Orange and other
herbicides, which they knew contained a lethal amount of dioxin. The
victims were prohibited from suing the U.S. government because of
sovereign immunity. Despite agreeing to compensate U.S. veterans in an
earlier lawsuit for some illnesses caused by their exposure to Agent
Orange and other herbicides, the U.S. government and the chemical
companies claimed before the courts, and to this day, that no evidence
supports a connection between exposure and disease.

Efforts by veterans’ groups and others to take care of U.S. vets
produced a compensation scheme administered by the Veterans
Administration. It annually pays out billions of dollars to veterans
who can demonstrate that they were in a contaminated part of Vietnam
and have an illness associated with Agent Orange exposure.

Shamefully, the Vietnamese people who were exposed to Agent Orange on
a scale unheard of in modern warfare have been denied recompense.

After the 2009 Paris tribunal, while I was president of the National
Lawyers Guild, I participated in a delegation to Vietnam to present
our findings to President Nguyen Minh Triet. I told him I was baffled
that even as U.S. bombs were falling on the Vietnamese people, they
made a distinction between the U.S. government and the American
people. The president responded, “We fought the forces of
aggression, but we always reserved our love for the people of America
… because we knew they always supported us.” He was referring to
the powerful U.S. antiwar movement in which I was a proud participant.

The United States and Vietnam normalized relations 30 years ago
following a 19-year trade embargo on the latter. “It’s taken
decades to build the current level of mutual trust and cooperation
between the United States and Vietnam,” George Black, author
of _The Long Reckoning_, an examination of U.S.-Vietnam relations
since the war, told
[[link removed]] _The
New York Times_. “And the whole process has been underpinned by our
willingness to deal with the worst humanitarian legacies.”

But Donald Trump has started a new war on Vietnam, a tariff war,
imposing a 46 percent tariff rate (temporarily on hold as the two
countries “negotiate”). The U.S. and Vietnam conduct $160 billion
[[link removed]] in
annual commerce. And while the Vietnamese people commemorate 50 years
since the end of the American war in their country, the Trump
administration has ordered its senior diplomats in Vietnam to avoid
participation in the commemoration events.

Just compensation for victims of Agent Orange is a moral imperative.
People who support Tlaib’s legislation should contact their
congressional representatives and urge them to sign on as additional
co-sponsors.

_Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law,
dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president
of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory
boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S.
representative to the continental advisory council of the Association
of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing:
Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues._

_Truthout is a nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing
independent reporting and commentary on a diverse range of social
justice issues. Since our founding in 2001, we have anchored our work
in principles of accuracy, transparency, and independence from the
influence of corporate and political forces._

* Agent Orange
[[link removed]]
* Vietnam War
[[link removed]]
* Vietnam veterans
[[link removed]]
* birth defects
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed].]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]