Stern newspaper runs article on Tran To Nga's historic lawsuit (Photo: VNA)In their announcement issued right after the Evry court’s ruling, lawyers WilliamBourdon, Amélie Lefebvre và Bertrand Repolt, who have supported Nga for morethan 10 years, affirmed that the court was applying an obsolete definition ofthe immunity of jurisdiction principle which contradicted modern principles ofinternational and national law.
They said they were surprised as the court recognised that the companiesconcerned had acted under the constraint of the then US government whereas theyanswered to a call for tenders, which they were free to do or not.
More seriously, the US government at that time did not force the production ofproducts containing a high dioxin concentration such as Agent Orange. This onlycame from the policy of the chemical companies themselves, the lawyers said.
Nga, 79,accuses 14 multinational chemical companies, including herbicide manufacturerMonsanto (now under the Bayer Group of Germany), of supplying the herbicide anddefoliant chemical - Agent Orange (AO)/dioxin, which was used extensively bythe US army between 1961-1971 in Vietnam, causing serious consequences for 4million people and severely poisoning the environment.
The woman, also an AO victim, haspursued the lawsuit for over a decade, including six years in court.
During 1961-1971, the US troops sprayed 80 million liters of herbicides and defoliants, 46 liters of which were Agent Orange produced by many companies./.
VNA
