It is a classroom full of sunlight in Vietnam’s southern city formerly known as Saigon, with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck painted on the wall overlooking several computers.
But one pupil writes with a pencil held between his toes, another cannot close her smiling mouth properly and the oldest of them, Tran Thi Hoan, wheels herself in and out as her legs have no calves.
They are residents of Ho Chi Minh City’s Peace Village 2, a state project set up in 1990 from a ward of Tu Du Maternity Hospital to help disabled children, mostly victims of the Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange.
On Monday, a New York court will begin hearing a lawsuit brought by more than 100 Vietnamese seeking compensation and a clean-up of contaminated areas from more than 30 firms, among them Dow Chemical Co and Monsanto Co, the largest makers of Agent Orange.
It is the first time Vietnamese have sought legal redress since the Vietnam War ended in April 1975.
“I wish the suit will end with a victory so that the life of the victims like me could be materially better,” said Hoan, a 10th-grade student who came to the Peace Village from the central province of Binh Thuan.
She was also born with no left palm. Hoan’s younger brother died at birth as he had no peritoneum, Hoan said.
{{/usCountry}}She was also born with no left palm. Hoan’s younger brother died at birth as he had no peritoneum, Hoan said.
{{/usCountry}}Dr Nguyen Thi Phuong Tan, head of the Peace Village, said many of her patients suffered from severe physical defects, while others face chromosome disorder. “Most of their children were born and grew up in areas sprayed with the Agent Orange defoliant during the war in Vietnam,” Tan, also member of the Ho Chi Minh City’s committee for Agent Orange victims, said.
US forces sprayed an estimated 20 million gallons of herbicides, including Agent Orange, in Vietnam between 1962 and 1971 to deny food and forest cover to Vietnamese communists.