2024-08-22 13:00:22
The possibility of a last chance trial has become even more remote: the chemical companies which produced Agent Orange should not be subject to a second instance judgment in France. The powerful pesticide released from their factories however caused millions of victims and polluted the area for a long time. However, Thursday August 22, the Paris Court of Appeal confirmed the inadmissibility of Tran To Nga’s request. This Franco-Vietnamese, who is 82 years old, launched proposals before the French courts ten years ago, in order to bring Dow Chemical, Monsanto, Thomson Hayward, Hercules, Uniroyal, Diamond Shamrock, Occidental Chemical Corporation to evaluate the buildings -a total job, involved in the supply of exfoliant that spread during the Vietnam War. Millions of liters have damaged the country’s tropical forests and affected the fighters who protected them during the 1960s.
Following mergers and name changes that have taken place since then, fourteen companies are indicted before French justice. The whole question is to determine whether they did it under the oppression of the American government during the war, as they say, or whether they were released in the production process of this highly toxic product. Synthesized from the research carried out by the American army in the 1940s, it created “Seveso dioxin” (TCDD) and continues, even today, to give birth to deformed, atrophied children in certain Vietnamese areas, without eyes, hydrocephalus…
The stubborn approach of Tran To Nga, an activist and journalist during this war, ended up being tried by the Evry court of justice in 2021. The process was then considered unacceptable in the first instance. With the help of lawyer William Bourdon and his team, who fully supported him from the beginning, Ms. Tran pleaded. She and her daughters suffered from many pathologies linked to Agent Orange.
Immunity from lawsuit
On June 7, in the Tronchet room of the Paris court, which is less given the scale of the subject discussed, all the people who have come to support Tran To Nga have become, stopped, in tooth. Half of the seats are occupied by the fifteen or so advisers of American companies have given orders to protect them. The latter asked, from the court of appeal as from the Evry court, to be able to avail themselves of “immunity from jurisdiction”: the rule of customary international law, according to which the State cannot be judged by another for actions taken. in the exercise of its sovereignty. A policy that helps promote friendly relations between capitals.
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