I am a product of the Vietnam war in which America treated my birth country as a chemical laboratory with pesticide warfare. Many of my people suffer to this day from the lifelong impacts of the decision to spray thousands of hectares with the deadly chemical cocktail.
I have witnessed a high proportion of my fellow Vietnamese adoptees suffering from cancers at relatively young ages, a proportion of our children born with disabilities, mine included. Whether we can categorically say it is caused by agent orange being sprayed, is unclear but we know it was an airborne contaminant that would have impacted our mothers with us while in utero and in environments we may have been exposed to as young children.
For the newer, younger generations of Vietnamese adoptees, they are born in a country that still suffers the effects of the contaminated land and waters from agent orange. How many of them suffer from generational impacts of agent orange?
One of the most confronting realities I experienced whilst visiting Vietnam’s orphanages was meeting with the children who live with serious deformities and disabilities, those who are not able to be looked after in family homes because their complex needs are too overwhelming.
Agent Orange awareness month reminds me of the power differentials that precede intercountry adoption. I see the American war veterans and their families can get free testing für die Exposition gegenüber Agent Orange und Anerkennung der Auswirkungen und Unterstützung für das, was Agent Orange auf sie hatte, dennoch wird zu wenig getan für die Menschen in Vietnam und andere wie uns, die Kollateralschäden .. Vietnamesische Adoptierte werden ins Ausland geschickt.
Vielleicht denken die Amerikaner und andere adoptierende Regierungen, dass es ausreichte, uns vor ihren eigenen Taten zu „retten“, unser Land auszulöschen und uns zu haben geflogen auf ihr Land, wo wir aufwachsen können, um die Kriegshandlungen und die Täter zu beschönigen, denn schließlich Wir sollten dankbar sein, adoptiert zu werden, oder??!
Ressourcen
Operation Babylift: Die Perspektive eines Adoptierten
Operation Babylift: Massenentführung?
Fehlgeleitete Absichten: Operation Babylift und die Folgen humanitärer Maßnahmen
Die Kontroverse um die Operation Babylift während des Vietnamkrieges