Tran To Nga is not about to forget this day in 1966. At the time, she was 22 years old and part of the independence movement of North Vietnam which fought against the southern part, supported by the Americans.
“It was during a mission near Saigon, remembers the former war correspondent with the Huffington Post. One day, I heard the noise of a plane circulating and spraying. We were in underground shelters. I went up and that's where I received the poison. "
This poison is Agent Orange.
A powerful herbicide containing dioxin widely used during the Vietnam War, from 1961, by the US military.
It is estimated that more than 84 million liters of Agent Orange have been spread over ten years in this territory to destroy the vegetation which served as camouflage for the fighters of the Viet-cong (name given to South Vietnam during the war) and to prevent their progression.
Exposed for several years, Tran To Nga suffers from various diseases typical of contamination by dioxin: type 2 diabetes with an extremely rare insulin allergy.
She contracted two tuberculosis and was diagnosed with cancer.
According to NGOs, four million people - Vietnamese civilians, American soldiers, Vietnamese fighters - have been directly exposed to this poison.
A US Air Force plane participates in an agent orange spray during the Vietnam War, March 3, 1967. © AFP
The war crime trial
For more than 10 years, Tran To Nga has been fighting on behalf of all these victims.
In 2014, she lodged a complaint with the Évry court against several multinational agrochemicals including Monsanto and Dow Chemicals, which helped manufacture Agent Orange.
This complaint in France was made possible by a vote of the French Parliament which restored, in 2013, the competence of the French judge in matters of international law.
Since this date, a victim of French nationality can sue a foreign third party for a war crime, genocide, crime against humanity, committed outside the national territory.
Initially scheduled for last October, the hearing for pleadings opened on Monday, January 25, after six years of proceedings.
[ACTU TRIAL] The hearing is a victim of its own success!
So many people today for this historic trial that the entry level into the courtroom has been drastically reduced after the lunch break.
Thank you for being so many her #JusticePourTranToNga
- Vietnam-Dioxine Collective (@VietnamDioxine) January 25, 2021
To win her case, Tran To Nga will have to convince the judges of a link between the spraying she suffered and the diseases from which they suffer and those from which her family suffers.
She lost her first daughter, born with a heart defect.
Her second daughter also suffers from it.
Numerous scientific studies have shown that the effects of dioxin are transmitted over several generations.
Asked by AFP, Bayer-Monsanto minimizes its responsibility and explains that Agent Orange had "been manufactured under the sole direction of the US government for exclusively military purposes".
Tran To Nga and his advisers assure on the contrary that the American state was duped by these firms on the toxicity of agent orange, a name which it owes to the orange bands painted on the barrels in which it was stored.
David vs. Goliath
Faced with the complainant and her three lawyers, an army was mobilized by the large American chemical firms: nearly forty lawyers, followers of the intricacies of the procedure.
The stake is colossal for these companies which want at all costs to avoid a conviction which could trigger other initiatives.
"With the trial in France, we are really reaching a point in the procedure never reached. What is historic is that for the first time the trial ends up to the hearing of pleadings", explains to RFI André Bouny , indefatigable pacifist activist and author of the reference essay "Agent Orange, Apocalypse Vietnam".
Because the multiple trial attempts initiated by victims in different countries of the world have ended in failure.
In 2013, the South Korean justice did condemn Monsanto and Dow Chemicals to compensate 39 Vietnam war veterans but the two companies challenged the decision and the plaintiffs never received a dime.
In the late 1980s, an out-of-court settlement was signed with American veterans.
In exchange for stopping the proceedings, several chemical industry firms paid $ 180 million in compensation.
Sign of the feverishness of these American giants, an amicable agreement was also proposed to Tran To Nga.
An agreement she refused.
In the event of victory, she would become the first victim of Vietnamese nationality to obtain compensation.
Ecocide
Human drama, the use of Agent Orange is also an ecological tragedy.
The Vietnam War has been over for more than 45 years yet the effects of dioxin persist in Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian ecosystems.
The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that more than three million people still suffer the consequences of these aerial spraying because "the dioxin has descended in the soils and in the water tables which feed the cities and the countryside and it is also found in the sludge ", explains André Bouny.
However, the toxic power of dioxin is "absolutely phenomenal", 13 times greater than herbicides such as glyphosate, reminds AFP Valérie Cabanes, lawyer and expert in environmental issues.
Through this "historic" trial, the septuagenarian intends to participate in the international recognition of the crime of "ecocide".
A concept used for the first time in 1970, during the Vietnam War, but which remains absent from international criminal law.
However, there is still a long way to go.
In the event of an unfavorable judgment, these giants of the chemical industry will appeal and the procedure could drag on for several years.
"Madame Tran To Nga is old and sick, she is 78 years old. The objective for the firms is to gain time while waiting for her to die, deplores André Bouny. Because if she were to die, everything would be wrong. would stop. "
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