Tran To Nga visits an AO victim in Soc Trang province. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – The play 'Our Poisoned Bodies' which is about the life and struggles of Tran To Nga premiered at the theater of Choisy Le Roi city, France, on February 9.
In 90 minutes, Angelica Kiyomi Tisseyre-Sekine – a half Vietnamese actress who played the role of Nga, stole the hearts of the audience.
During the performance, the audience remained almost completely silent. Not even a breath could be heard. It took nearly half an hour after the play ended for the audience to leave their seats, lingering in the lobby, discussing the emotionally charged play, with tears glistening in their eyes.
Nga alone spent 10 years of her life in a lawsuit against 26 US chemical corporations that supplied 80 million litres of defoliants, including highly concentrated dioxin for the US military during the Vietnam War.
This French-Vietnamese woman has cancer, a subsequence of Agent Orange (AO)/dioxin caused in 1966 when she was operating in the southern battlefield as a reporter of the Liberation News Agency. She worked in some of the most heavily AO/dioxin affected areas in southern Vietnam, such as Cu Chi, Ben Cat, and along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, ultimately being contaminated herself. She suffers from a number of acute diseases.
Of her three children, the first died of heart defects and the second suffers from a blood disease. A grandchild of Nga also suffers from AO-related illnesses.
For nearly 10 years, she pursued the lawsuit against chemical companies that produced and supplied AO used by the US army during the Vietnam War, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical, to ask for justice for Vietnamese victims of AO /dioxin.
This "historic case" has been in the French court system for more than six years with 19 procedural sessions and one litigation session. In the first instance session on May 10, 2021, the Evry Court declared that it was not legitimate to give a jurisdiction and the case was transferred to the Paris Court of Appeal by Nga and her lawyers.
The two sides remained critical of each other in exchanges, until expectedly in the second quarter of 2023, the litigation session at the Paris Court got underway.
Acting alone at first, after 10 years, Nga's "historic lawsuit" has been supported by millions of people around the world.
The play was based on the book Ma Terre Empoisonnée (My Poisoned Land) written by Nga. It was made by Lumiere d’Aout group. All the events in the book occurred over these 10 years.
There was only one actress in the play. She was supported with the modern techniques of theatre. Throughout the play each scene and every moment of war that the people of Vietnam and the country of Vietnam have experienced were recreated.
Earlier, on the day of litigation at Evry court, Marine Bachelot also performed a solo for those who attended the litigation.
From 1961 to 1971, the US army sprayed 80 million litres of herbicides which contained about 400kg of dioxin - one of the most toxic substances known to man - on Vietnam. Over the last 60 years, effects of this deadly chemical still linger in the soil and water, and many people’s bodies. More than 4.8 million Vietnamese people are suffering from its consequences.
Every year, Vietnam earmarks more than 10 trillion VND (over 440 million USD) from its budget to provide aid and health care for AO/dioxin victims and for assisting the disadvantaged areas severely affected by the herbicides./.
