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by Andrea Germanos
August
28, 2018
from
TheLastAmericanVagabond Website
In the wake of a
U.S. court ordering
Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to man who says
its weedkiller
Roundup caused his cancer, Vietnam has called
on the agrichemical giant to pay reparations to
Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.
"This case is a
precedent that rejects previous arguments that the herbicides
supplied to the U.S. military by Monsanto and other U.S. chemical
companies during the Vietnam War are not harmful to people's
health," spokesperson for the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Nguyen Phuong Tra said to
reporters last week.
"We believe
Monsanto should be responsible for compensating Vietnamese victims
of Agent Orange for the damages caused by the company's herbicides,"
she said.
Monsanto, now a
unit of Bayer, was one of the manufacturers
of Agent Orange.
The
U.S. dumped roughly 45 million liters of the notorious compound,
which contained dioxin,
on Vietnam during the war, unleashing,
"a
slow-onset disaster whose devastating economic, health, and
ecological impacts… are still being felt today."
With its
long-lasting impacts on the Vietnamese, as well as U.S.
service-members, it's been called,
"one of the
most tragic legacies of the war."
Viet Nam News reported Sunday
that the Association for Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA),
which is working for justice on behalf of roughly 3 million
Vietnamese affected by the chemical warfare, is also hopeful given
the new verdict.
"No matter how
difficult and prolonged this case might be, we won't ever give up on
it, for the sake of the millions of Vietnamese victims," said Quách
Thành Vinh, VAVA's chief of office and director of liaison lawyers
office.
Former U.S. school
groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson, who's suffering from non-Hodgkin's
lymphoma, secured his
legal victory against Monsanto on Aug. 10.
CNN reported that
the ruling,
"could set a
massive precedent for thousands of other cases claiming
Monsanto's famous herbicide causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma."
Monsanto has said
it is appealing the verdict.
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