Vietnamese plaintiff in Agent Orange court case dies of cancer

Former North Vietnamese soldier-turned-crusader Nguyen Van Quy, 53, died late Saturday in Haiphong of stomach cancer.

 "His stomach cancer was caused by Agent Orange," said Mai The Chinh, spokesman of the Vietnam Association of Agent Orange/Dioxin Victims. "According to the US Academy of Science, stomach cancer is one of 13 kinds of diseases that can be caused by Agent Orange." 

Quy was well-known in Vietnam as a public face of victims of Agent Orange, which the Vietnamese government claims has affected the health of some 3 million people.

He joined the communist North Vietnamese army in 1972 and fought three years in central Vietnam, which was heavily sprayed with the toxic defoliant during the war. 

After the war, Quy developed a variety of illness and all three of his children had birth defects, one of them so severe the child died.

"They are clearly the victims of Agent Orange," Chinh said. "The son cannot walk and must move on a wheelchair and the daughter is suffering from mental retardation." 

US warplanes used Agent Orange - so-named for the colour of a stripe on the barrels - to deny forest cover to communist troops and supply lines.

During the war, about 70 million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed on Vietnamese forests between 1962 and 1971. The US Veteran's Administration offered compensation to American soldiers exposed to the chemical after it was linked with illnesses like cancer, birth deformities and organs dysfunction.

Washington has recently begun cooperating with Vietnam on environmental cleanup of dioxin, but it rejects Hanoi's figure of 3 million people directly affected by Agent Orange.

In 2004, Quy joined a group of Vietnamese veterans and their children to file a class-action lawsuit in 2004 against the more than 30 chemical companies that supplied Agent Orange to the US military, including Dow Chemical and Monsanto.

The suit claims the companies knew Agent Orange was toxic, but still supplied it to the US military in order to make a profit.

A federal court in New York dismissed the case, but the Vietnamese plaintiffs are appealing the ruling.

Quy travelled to New York last month to represent the complainants in the appeal. He had only returned last week when his already-weak health took a turn for the worse and he died.

 The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York is not expected to rule on the Agent Orange case appeal for two or three months.

//Deutsche Presse- Agentur