The code name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. An estimated 4.8 million of the victims of Agent Orange today are children.
Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women’s Union.
The president of the union, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, described “the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation”.
She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims.
Aldis hand-delivered the letter to the office of Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee.
He has had no reply.
When Amnesty International pointed out that in 2001 Dow Chemical acquired Union Carbide, “the company responsible for the Bhopal gas leak [in India in 1984] which killed 7,000 to 10,000 people immediately and a further 15,000 in the following 20 years”, David Cameron described Dow as a “reputable company”.
Cheers, then, as the television cameras pan across the £7m decorative wrap that sheathes the Olympic Stadium: the product of a ten-year “deal” between the IOC and such a reputable destroyer.
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