A Paris court has once again blocked an attempt by French-Vietnamese activist Tran To Nga to hold chemical companies accountable for the use of Agent Orange, which killed and maimed millions of people during the Vietnam War. The court upheld the companies' legal immunity – a decision that has sparked renewed outrage among victims and their supporters.
In a first reaction, Tran's lawyer Bertrand Repolt told journalists: "We are not surprised, but obviously disappointed."
He said that the decision reflected a "bad interpretation" of jurisprudence when it comes to corporate immunity, showing that the companies in question have a lot of leeway.
Like in 2021, the Paris appeals court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to judge a case involving the wartime actions of the United States government, on whose orders the chemical companies supplied Agent Orange.
Repolt stressed that the judgement is not "final" and that the battle will continue in the Court of Cassation, France's top appeals court.
Meanwhile a spokesperson for Vietnam's Foreign Ministry, quoted by the daily Vietnam News, said that Hanoi found the ruling "very regrettable".
"While the war in Vietnam has long ended, its tremendous implications continue to linger on the country and people of Vietnam, including the long-term severe consequences of Agent Orange," spokesperson Pham Thu Hang told reporters.
Through the generations
Tran, who was born in Vietnam when it was under French occupation, has been battling the chemical giants in court for a decade.
She was exposed to Agent Orange at age 24, when it was used by the US military to destroy the forests that sheltered Vietcong guerrilla fighters.
Her first daughter died of a heart defect after 17 months, while her two other daughters and grandchildren suffer from serious health conditions that she ascribes to her exposure to the defoliant.
Now 82, Tran herself suffers from "recurrent tuberculosis, cancer, and type II diabetes", according to Vietnam Dioxin, a collective that fights for the rights of the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange.
In 2014 Tran filed a lawsuit in Paris against 14 firms that allegedly made or sold the highly toxic chemical, including the Dow consortium and Monsanto, now owned by German giant Bayer.
Backed by several NGOs, Tran accuses the companies of being responsible for injuries sustained by her, her children and countless others, as well as for damage done to the environment.
But in 2021 a court dismissed the case, ruling that the companies were protected from prosecution because they had acted on behalf of a sovereign government.
Millions of victims
According to a 2003 study published in the journal Nature, "between 1961 and 1971, the American army dumped some 80 million litres of chemicals on the country by air, above the forests of former French Indochina".
The aim was to destroy Vietnam's dense jungle vegetation where communist fighters of the Vietcong were thought to hide.
According to the study, data revealed that "millions of Vietnamese were likely to have been sprayed upon directly". Vietnam Dioxin estimates that the chemical caused more than three million victims.
Apart from human casualties, Vietnam's ecology was also badly affected.
According to some estimates, a fifth of South Vietnamese forests were chemically destroyed, and more than a third of mangroves disappeared.
In 1984, 15,000 American veterans who said they suffered from cancer, liver disease and nervous disorders after being exposed to Agent Orange were awarded the equivalent of €225 million in compensation in a settlement with Monsanto and Dow Chemical, the main producers of the substance.
But Vietnamese victims were never compensated. In 2005, petitions filed by an association representing them were dismissed by US courts and eventually by the Supreme Court, which argued that Agent Orange was a herbicide and not a chemical weapon.
"We strongly support the efforts of Agent Orange victims to urge chemical companies in charge of producing and supplying Agent Orange or dioxin to the US in this war against Vietnam, which has caused millions of Vietnamese people to become victims, to take responsibility, and address their relevant consequences," commented Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham after Thursday's ruling.
(with newswires)
