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East London News: For months East Londonpeace campaigner Len Aldis has led the campaign against the Dow Chemical company being accepted as a sponsor of the Olympic Games. Now his campaign has been validated by the Vietnamese Government. Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Mr Hoang Tuan Anh has written to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) calling on them to reconsider permitting Dow Chemical’s role in the 2012 Games. The Minister’s letter, printed below, explains why his Government is taking a stand against this company.
The effects of Dow Chemical’s “agent orange” in Vietnam did not end with US intervention in that country. As if to underline how the effects of “agent orange” continue to be felt, shortly after the Bank Holiday Len Aldis is speaking at the Hanoi Medical University international conference on Birth Defects, where he will be speaking on Agent Orange and the consequences it has had on the people of Vietnam.
For more information about Len Aldis’s campaigns, visit www.lenaldis.co.uk.
(Official translation)
International Olympic Committee (IOC)
Chateau de Vidy, 1001Lausanne,Switzerland
Fax: +41 21 621 6216
Ha Noi, 2 May 2012
Dear Mr. Jacques Rogge, President of the International Olympic Committee and other members of the Executive Board,
First of all, on behalf of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam, I would like to extend the best compliments to Mr. President and other members of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee.
It is with regret that I have to express profound concerns of the Government and people ofViet Namabout the decision of IOC to accept the Dow Chemical Company as a global partner sponsoring the Olympic Movement from now to 2020.
The Dow Chemical Company is one of the major producers of the Agent Orange, which have been used by the US Army with the amount of 80 millions litres to spray over villages in the South of Viet Nam over 10 years, from 1961 to 1971, destroying the environment, claiming the lives of millions of Vietnamese people and leaving terrible effects on millions of others, who are now suffering from incurable diseases and some hundreds of thousands of children of the fourth generation were born with severe congenital deformities. What is worth condemning is the fact that, despite of international opinions, Dow Chemical expressed their indifference and refused compensation for victims of the Agent Orange produced by the company, as well as their responsibility to clean up contaminated areas. Spending zero effort to recover their mistakes in the past, Dow continues to destroy the current living environment. In 2010, US Environmental Protection Agency listed Dow as the second worst polluter in the world.
Since the ultimate goals of the Olympic Movement are to promote good health, equality and progress of the mankind, we think that the acceptance of IOC for Dow sponsorship is a hasty decision. Therefore, we call upon IOC to reconsider your decision and stand up for millions of Agent Orange victims inViet Namand over the world, asking Dow Chemical to fulfill their responsibilities for victims of the Agent Orange and spend the adequate financial resources to solve these problems, only by then they could be eligible to sponsor the Olympic Games.
On this occasion, I would like to reaffirm our support and commitment ofViet Namto activities of the Olympic Movement in general and the Olympics/ Paralympics in particular. The sports delegation ofViet Namwould try their best in the spirits of sportsmanship to contribute to the success of the Olympic Games.
Thank you very much for your attention.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed by)
Hoang Tuan Anh
Minister
Copies to:
– The London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games
– Vietnam National Olympic Committee
Vietnam joins protest against Dow Chemicals
http://postnoon.com/2012/05/27/vietnam-joins-protest-against-dow-chemicals/50723
Vietnam joins the protest against Olympic sponsor Dow Chemical, accused of “green-washing” its Agent Orange sins
Cain Nunns
The organisers of London’s 2012 Olympics call them the Green Games — a monument to best sustainable practice within the sports world. The Vietnamese government says the organisers should tell that to the hundreds of thousands of children born with cleft palates, mental disabilities, hernias, lung, larynx and prostate cancer, missing limbs and extra fingers and toes. Vietnam joined the growing chorus of protest against Olympic sponsors accused of “green-washing” their past sins earlier this month. In a letter obtained by GlobalPost, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism castigated the Lausanne-based International Olympic Committee (IOC) for green-lighting Dow Chemical as a major Olympic sponsor.
Dow produced about one-third of the 80 million liters of Agent Orange defoliants sprayed over southern Vietnam, during what the Vietnamese call “The American War.” The Vietnamese Red Cross estimates that up to 3 million Vietnamese have been affected by Agent Orange, including at least 300,000 children born with birth defects. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs estimates are much higher. It says 4.8 million people were exposed, resulting in 400,000 deaths and injuries and about 500,000 children born with defects, many of which are still being born to this day — some four generations later. “Agent Orange … destroyed the environment, claimed the lives of millions of Vietnamese and left terrible effects on millions of others, who are now suffering from incurable diseases. Hundreds of thousands of fourth generation children have been born with severe congenital deformities,” wrote Hoang Tuan Anh, Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism to the IOC.
“Dow Chemical has expressed indifference and refused compensation for victims of Agent Orange, as well as their responsibility to clean up contaminated areas. Dow also continues to destroy the environment. In 2010, US EPA listed Dow as the second worst
polluter in the world,” the letter said.
Vietnam has unsuccessfully brought legal action against Dow and other Agent Orange producers in US courts. But activists say that the Communist state is caught in a legal bind. The producers of Agent Orange blame the US government for its use, while sovereign immunity shields Washington from prosecution in American courts.
US helicopters and planes sprayed about 20 per cent of southern Vietnam with the defoliants over a 10-year period. The goal was to strip the North Vietnamese of jungle cover and limit access to food supplies. A less reported aim was to drive rural Vietnamese who may have been sympathetic to Hanoi into US-controlled cities in what was then South Vietnam. “It’s ironic that Dow is allowed to sponsor sporting events including Paralympics athletes when it is responsible for creating generations of severely disabled children and refuses to do anything to help them,” wrote a Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin spokesman in an email.
Dow, the IOC and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games ignored repeated requests for comment. Dow Chemical inked a 10-year deal with the IOC in 2010. Dow envisioned a global sales bump of about $1 billion by promoting, ironically enough, a raft of environmentally-friendly products.
But it was the $11.25 million contract doled out to Dow for the 336 giant panels that will make up the decorative wrap that first sparked controversy. The Commission for a Sustainable London 2012, a watchdog body charged with overseeing the Games’ environmental credentials, was rocked when commissioner Meredith Alexander resigned last month in protest over Dow’s awarding of the stadium contract.
Campaigners believe that Dow also has ongoing liabilities relating to the 1984 Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, that led to an estimated 20,000 deaths and serious injury to tens of thousands more. “But the Olympics is big business. There is an expensive machine behind the Games that is funded by corporate sponsors. Sadly when these sponsors are selected, money talks much more loudly than values,” said Alexander to The Guardian. Big business indeed. Dow’s Olympic stable mates also include BP and Rio Tinto, two resource extraction behemoths that rights groups say have woeful environmental and human-rights track records.
“Dow refuses to accept responsibility. They state they were told to make the chemicals by the US government and will not and have not paid one cent in compensation,” writes Len Aldis, secretary of Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, in an email to GlobalPost. “Despite their record, money talks. The IOC should cancel Dow’s sponsorship of the Games.”
For those of you that missed it…
Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society
Secretary: Len Aldis
Tel: 0208 980 7146. Mobile: 0779 657 1017
e-mail: lenaldis@yahoo.co.uk; http://www.lenaldis.co.uk
Skype: Len.Aldis
AN OPEN LETTER
TO ALL COMMITTEE MEMBERS
OF THE LONDON OLYMPIC AND PARALYMPIC GAMES
Lord Coe. Chair; Sir Keith Mills, Deputy Chair; HRH the Princess Royal; Charles Allen;
Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari; Sir Phillip Craven; Paul Deighton, Chief Exe; Jonathan Edwards;
Tony Hall; Andrew Hunt; Justin King; Stephen Lovegrove; Adam Penglly; Tim Reddish;
Lord Moynihan; Sir Craig Reedie; Martin Stewart; Sir Robin Wales. Mayor of Newham; Neil Wood.
In a few weeks, unless you take action, the Olympic Stadium will have been surrounded by a wrap comprising 336 giant panels made by a company responsible for deaths of many thousands, including thousands of babies that died in their mother’s womb. Responsible for the deaths of many more thousands of those that lived for just a few months.
That company is Dow Chemical, whose record was known to each and everyone of you through the many court cases it has had brought against them in the United States for disposing of tonnes of highly toxic waste into rivers and lakes near its plants. For lawsuits brought by American Vietnam Veterans and Vietnamese suffering from the effects of Agent Orange.
But let me remind each of you, the biggest crime of Dow Chemical was its part, along with 35 other U.S. Chemical Companies, headed by Monsanto, in manufacturing Agent Orange used with devastating effect on Southern Vietnam for a period of TEN-YEARS, yes, TEN-YEARS. 80 million litres of the chemical was sprayed over the forests, crops, hamlets and the PEOPLE themselves, from August 1961 to 1971, resulting in the deaths mentioned above.
Through the use of Agent Orange, Dow Chemical and the others have left a legacy that today in Vietnam affects four million. It has also entered into the fourth generation. From my first visit in 1989 and each year since, I have met and seen many of these tragic victims, of all ages, from new born babies that are minus feet and sometimes hand, young children suffering from water on the brain, and their heads four-times the normal size where their illness is slowly crushing the brain that ends in death.
I have met with youngsters minus a limb, some minus two; some will be confined to a bed or wheelchair for the rest of their lives unable to fend for themselves. In Dong Nai I met a mother and her two daughters both unable to move or speak but just lay on their bed, the mother looks after them and their needs and has done so for 42 years, the age of her eldest daughter, the other daughter is 36 years. I could describe more of the people I have met over the past 22 years. But what angers me more is when I see children affected that were born after the spraying stopped in 1971 and long after the ward ended in 1975.
This is what Dow Chemicals has done to the people of Vietnam, and each of you have seemed fit to support the appointment of the company to be a sponsor of the Games that opens in London on 27th July despite the many objections made by people from a number of countries.
Shame on you all.
Len Aldis. Secretary