Alarcón demands justice for victims of U.S. aggression against Vietnam

BY MARTIN HACTHOUN

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, June 14 (PL).— Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, demanded justice today for victims of Agent Orange, which the United States used to bomb Vietnam during its war on that country.

Alarcón expressed that demand after he visited Tu Duc Hospital here, as well as what is known as Village of Peace (Hoa Binh), where attention is provided for children and adolescents who suffer from severe problems caused by this substance.

“The least that the United States should do is acknowledge the justice of that demand,” Alarcón affirmed after his tour of the Museum of the Vestiges of War in Ho Chi Minh City.

In reality, it would be good for all U.S. federal judges to visit this place to see, with their own eyes, the consequences of that war, he emphasized.

“The hospital and museum show the horror experienced by Vietnam in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and whose after-effects still endure today,” noted the Cuban leader, who was concluding his visit to this country.

From 1962 to 1971, the U.S. forces dropped millions of tons of chemical agents over Vietnam, including 400,000 tons of Agent Orange. In addition, they dropped 14,300,000 tons of different types of bombs.

The U.S. invasion of Vietnam killed 3 million people, injured 2 million and resulted in 300,000 missing.

Alarcón described the war and the methods and tactics used by the invading army as a barbarity of humanity.

“I wish the entire world could come through here, because today imperialism is using the same methods in other parts of the world, the same secret prisons, the same torture, the same bombs,” he exclaimed. “Humanity must be prevented, at all costs, from forgetting this barbarity, registered here in a very eloquent way, and which can never been forgiven,” he added.





"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow