Malaysian experience of Agent Orange

READING the report, “Seeking justice for victims” (The Star, Feb 1), I was reminded of a letter I wrote to The Star nearly 40 years ago. The article refers to the case in the French court taken up by a French-Vietnamese woman, Tran To Nga, who is suing 14 companies that produced and sold the powerful defoliant dioxin used by American troops during the Vietnam War.

In 1984, the journal New Scientist revealed that the British Army had used a herbicide identical to Agent Orange during the Emergency in Malaya (1948-60). Four years before that, when the Soviet Union was being accused of using chemical warfare against the Afghan people, the French Le Monde Diplomatique revealed that the British army had also done the same in Malaya during the Emergency.