Vietnam Seeks IOC Objection against U.S. Dow Chemicals in London Olympics

Vietnamese Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC)’s rejection against U.S. Dow Chemicals Company’s sponsorship of London Olympics as the firm’s Agent Orange (AO) products have seriously affected Vietnamese victims. In the letter sent on May 2, Hoang Tuan Anh said the Vietnamese government and people concerned about Dow’s involvement in the London 2012 Olympics given its notorious record of producing AO which was used by U.S. army in the Vietnam War. The minister called on the IOC to rethink their tie-up with Dow, saying the committee’s acceptance of the company’s sponsorship a “hasty decision.” In a statement emailed to Vietweek newspaper, the IOC said it had received the letter and that the committee had “studied carefully” the company’s history, calling Dow, which was listed the world’s second worst polluter by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2010, a “global leader in its field of business.”
Noam Chomsky, an American political writer, said it was “entirely appropriate” for Vietnam to object to Dow’s sponsorship. Meanwhile, Scot Wheeler, a Dow spokesman, rejected the Vietnamese letter, blaming it both “misguided” and “wrongly focused.” However, the Vietnamese government has licensed Dow and Monsanto, the U.S. corporations controlling an estimated 90% of the world’s seed genetics, to let them open representative offices in Vietnam. One of Monsanto’s former products, the killer Vietnam War-era military defoliant Agent Orange, remains infamous. The licenses of the two firms’ operations have caught strong protest among Vietnamese officials including Nguyen Van Rinh, chairman of the Vietnam Association of Victims of AO who said he would continue asking the government about this at the third meeting of the National Assembly’s 13th tenure late this month. “My ultimate goal is to push the government to get both Dow and Monsanto out of Vietnam,” he said.
Vietnam has an estimated 4.8 million victims who have suffered serious consequences including disability or any defect linked to AO after the American troops sprayed about 80 million liters of defoliants including the highly toxic Agent Orange over 10% of total areas in southern Vietnam from 1961 to 1971. (Vietweek May 11-17 p1)