Hang Trong street, Hanoi, Vietnam
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A father and a son go selling ballpens and toothpicks around the city. A ballpen is worth 40 cents and each toothpicks box is worth 20 cents.
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There were so many untalkable thoughts in my mind while watching this family, and they are still there now.
The father, a veteran from Vietnam war, what did he fight for? for independence of his motherland, for freedom of his countrymen and for the happiness of his family. But now, peoples around him can live in peace except him. He not only spent his youth in the war but also his entire life with the burdens from it.
The son, a victim of dioxin poisoning since he was born, he can't talk, he can't control his acts and he can't enjoy the independence, the freedom, the happiness his father risked his life for.
How many victims can you see here?
Although the war has been over for 35 years, its images still remain around us...
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Wikipedia:
In 1961 and 1962, the Kennedy administration authorized the use of chemicals to destroy rice crops. Between 1961 and 1967, the U.S. Air Force sprayed 20 million U.S. gallons (75,700,000 L) of concentrated herbicides over 6 million acres (24,000 km2) of crops and trees, affecting an estimated 13% of South Vietnam's land. In 1965, 42% of all herbicide was sprayed over food crops. Another purpose of herbicide use was to drive civilian populations into RVN-controlled areas.
As of 2006, the Vietnamese government estimates that there are over 4,000,000 victims of dioxin poisoning in Vietnam, although the United States government denies any conclusive scientific links between Agent Orange and the Vietnamese victims of dioxin poisoning. In some areas of southern Vietnam dioxin levels remain at over 100 times the accepted international standard.
The U.S. Veterans Administration has listed prostate cancer, respiratory cancers, multiple myeloma, type II diabetes, B-cell lymphomas, soft tissue sarcoma, chloracne, porphyria cutanea tarda, peripheral neuropathy, and spina bifida in children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Although there has been much discussion over whether the use of these defoliants constituted a violation of the laws of war, the defoliants were not considered weapons, since exposure to them did not lead to immediate death or incapacitation.