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	Vietnam"s Toxic legacy lives on by Connie Levett The Age Vietnam   August 26, 2006   Nguyen Thi Kim Vang had never seen a child with a birth deformity before the American War. Thirty years later she lives with a constant screaming reminder.   Of her children, three died in the first few months, two are normal and the sixth still cannot recognise her despite the fact Mrs Vang has nursed, changed her nappies and fed her every day for 25 years. Her husband spent years in the jungle fighting for the Vietcong and was exposed to defoliants sprayed by US forces.   Her daughter, Duong Thi Thu Huong, now 25, was born apparently normal but a week later developed marks on her skin. Today she is a twisted shell, with the body weight of a 10-year-old, twitching in her dilapidated wheelchair in the simple family home in Vung Tau, a small coastal town two hours south of Ho Chi Minh City. Above her, in pride of place, is a large portrait of the father of the revolution, Ho Chi Minh. "She doesn"t know anything," said her mother, "but I have not had one full night"s sleep since she was born, she screams every night."   In Vietnam, it"s impossible to ignore Agent Orange; its casualties are everywhere. An estimated four million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange, a chemical mixture of two synthetic herbicides, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T, which was used to strip foliage from the jungle, depriving the Vietcong guerillas of shelter and food. It contains dioxin, which does not dissolve in water, is thought to have contaminated the water supply and entered the food chain through the soil. Between 1961 and 1971 the US sprayed 80 million litres of herbicides over southern Vietnam.   In the US, the government has found ways to look after its own casualties without admitting guilt, but the Vietnamese get very little airplay and have received no compensation.   The Vietnamese Government wants to change that. In March last year it lost a lawsuit against 37 chemical companies that provided the US government with Agent Orange. The US Department of Justice was not party to the suit, but filed a brief in support of the chemical companies. The judge ruled the allegations that the chemical caused birth defects and illness had not been proved.   Undaunted by the loss, the Vietnamese Government has launched an appeal, expected to go before the US Court of Appeal in November, promising new research on genetic deformity and 26 new plaintiffs to add to the original three.The clinching evidence in the appeal will be new research from the Military Medical Institute on 50,000 people, said Professor Nguyen Trong Nhan, deputy chairman of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin.   He told the state-owned Family and Society newspaper "it shows people who live in AO/dioxin-affected areas will have up to 2.95 per cent and 2.69 per cent of their children and grandchildren respectively deformed. The rates in other areas are 0.74 to 0.82 per cent."   Despite Vietnamese optimism, one US supporter of the appeal thinks it unlikely the court will find in their favour. Kenneth Herman, an academic and former veteran who runs a program in Da Nang for children disabled by Agent Orange, said: "The problem with Agent Orange is severe and ongoing. The research shows mutations through several generations. The reality is that science doesn"t know how long it will go on.   "It gets back to defence contracts: can they be held liable for defence materials sold to the government for war," he said.   In Vung Tau, the provincial chapter of the Vietnam Association for Victims of Agent Orange/dioxin says it has 3390 registered cases ranging from severe to mild, affecting first generation to third.   The association"s Dr Nguyen Thi Tan Thao took The Age to visit three cases in Vung Tau city: a man who developed paralysis in his 60s and can now only blink his eyes, Duong Thi Thu Huong, and a 22-year-old, who lies all day on a bed because of swollen joints, unable to walk, but who can talk, read and write. Her dream is to go to school. "If you come to the countryside I can show you much worse," he said.   In the years since the war, veterans from the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand have obtained compensation in out-of-court settlements. Yet nothing has been given to the people most exposed and whose lives continue to be affected by the toxin.   The US Veterans Administration has just approved disability payments for the US Navy"s "brown water" veterans — those who worked on the rivers, through areas that had been sprayed, Mr Herman said. "They will pay for disorders suffered by them or their children — non-Hodgkin"s lymphoma, type 2 diabetes, children born with spina bifida or who develop leukaemia.   "So while we are able to do that for our own veterans, they are not willing to do it for the Vietnamese people who have lived in that for 30 or 40 years," he said.
	Saddam on trial for Kurdish Genocide by Reuters / NYT / Newsweek Iraq   Baghdad. August 22, 2006   Saddam Hussein refused to plead as he went on trial yesterday for the killing of tens of thousands of Kurdish villagers in northern Iraq in 1988.   The start of the new trial, the second in which Saddam faces the death penalty, comes amid worsening sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites that has raised fears Iraq is sliding towards all-out civil war.   Saddam and six other defendants, including his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed "Chemical Ali" for allegedly ordering poison gas attacks on Kurds in northern Iraq, are charged over their roles in the eight-month so-called Anfal campaign in which hundreds of thousands were driven from their homes as 2000 villages were destroyed.   One survivor recalled at the weekend how the first scent of gas came to one of the Kurdish villages. Robitan Hama Amin said it had a sweet smell, like perfume. "People wanted to inhale it," Mr Amin said.   Chief prosecutor Munqith al-Faroon told the court in Baghdad yesterday: "It is difficult to fathom the barbarity of such acts." He said elderly people, women and children had been deported to detention camps "not because they committed crimes, but because they were Kurds".   The seven defendants, including Saddam"s former defence minister, face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their role in Anfal — or "the spoils of war" after the title of the eighth chapter of the Koran — which Mr Faroon said had left 182,000 people dead or missing.   Saddam and "Chemical Ali" face the additional, graver charge of genocide. All the main charges carry the death penalty.   Iraqi forces are accused of using mustard gas and nerve agents in the campaign, launched after Saddam declared large rural areas of three predominantly Kurdish provinces prohibited areas.   A series of eight campaigns between February and August 1988 was aimed at driving Kurds from their homes into "collective villages" where Iraqi authorities could monitor them.   Those who did not die in the military attacks were arrested, displaced, tortured or killed, prosecutors say.   Victim Mr Amin was sitting at the table with his wife and seven children when Iraqi fighter jets began dropping chemical bombs.   "I was totally blinded. I couldn"t see anything," Mr Amin, now 80, said.   "Everybody tried to escape. People vomited. Their skin burned. Some people lost their minds."   He clenched his fists. "I"d like to put a rope around the neck of Saddam Hussein myself and drag him through all the Kurdish villages," he said.   ‘A Crime Against Humanity’, by Jennifer Barrett. (Newsweek)   A human rights group explains how it gathers forensic evidence that may be used against Saddam Hussein and other alleged war criminals.   In the mid- to late 1980s, tens of thousands of Iraqi Kurds were killed in what was known as the Anfal Campaign. Survivors claimed that Saddam Hussein had unleashed deadly chemical weapons on their villages, a charge the Iraqi government denied. But a few years later, experts identified traces of mustard gas and a lethal nerve agent in soil samples collected by the group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), which also interviewed survivors and exhumed the bodies of victims.   Now, more than a dozen years later, the former Iraqi dictator and six co-defendants are being tried for the mass killings. This is the second trial for Hussein; a verdict in the first trial, for the deaths of over 100 Shiites in the early ‘80s, is expected in October. NEWSWEEK’s Jennifer Barrett discussed the case with PHR’s deputy director Susannah Sirkin, who oversaw the original investigation.   NEWSWEEK: What evidence did Physicians for Human Rights find that chemical weapons were used during the Anfal Campaign?   Susannah Sirkin: [We] sent a team to southern Turkey back in 1988 when tens of thousands of Kurds fled northern Iraq in the wake of what they said were chemical weapons attacks. At the time, Saddam Hussein and his government denied chemical weapons had been used and refused access to a United Nations team that wanted to investigate the allegations on the ground. After interviewing dozens of the refugees, we concluded—based on self-reported symptoms—that mustard gas had certainly been used and that an unknown nerve agent was also very likely used that would have caused muscular spasms and, soon after, death.   What symptoms did the refugees describe and how did they survive exposure to such a deadly nerve agent?   They had been some distance from the bomb they described as being dropped from the air. Those who were closer to the bomb died. The refugees described the bodies they saw as they ran away. They said the people who died turned black and blood-tinged fluid seeped from their noses and mouths. Their skin turned thick and leathery. They also described how small animals died within minutes around them. The people we’d interviewed had somehow survived but the symptoms they described confirmed to us the use of mustard gas: eye irritation, skin blistering, throat burning, dizziness, pain from breathing, shortness of breath.   Click on the link below to access the rest of this article. Visit the related web page
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