Vietnam War Human Rights Violations

852 Words2 Pages

Craig Marshall
Throughout history humans have been in wars with each other, violating each other’s rights. The declaration of human rights was made on the 10th of December 1948, to stop the mistreating of fellow human beings. Vietnam is a country filled with grief and mystery from the wars and the violations within it. The violations of: discrimination, war crimes, and human mistreatment. Today I will be discussing the effects of the United States army on the civilians of Vietnam.
The violations in the Vietnam War started in 1960. Many men, woman and children suffered and are still suffering from the effects of the war in Vietnam. These people had their rights violated when they were; raped, shot tortured and deformed through deadly chemicals. …show more content…

The types of things the civilians when through were horrible for many towns were slaughtered, and left there. This is evident where;” 500 people including women, children and the elderly were killed in the My Lai Massacre.. Higher-ranking U.S. Army officers managed to cover up the events of that day” (A+E Networks, My Lai Massacre, viewed 22th July 2015, http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre#section_1). This has impacted the Vietnamese civilians by creating fear of the us army. This also violates article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948),” You have the right to live, and to live in freedom and safety. “This consequently had effects on the U.S soldiers and the people back in America who started accusing the innocent U.S soldiers of doing terrible …show more content…

The long term effects on the people of Vietnam are things like deformities and mental disabilities. Examples of these are Agent Orange a deadly chemical weapon used to deforest the jungles to make the enemy run, this unfortunately had the opposite effect and poisoned the Air, Water, and Food that the every one used including the civilians. Some of the effects of this weaponry is that the people who consumed it would get; birth problems, deformity, brain dysfunction’s, retardation and more gruesome ones. These effects are only now wearing of on some of the people that were there. We can only imagine how much pain the infected civilians, US, and Vietcong were going through. “ Dioxin is a persistent organic pollutant that is toxic over many decades, is not water-soluble and does not degrade easily. Clinging to soil particles carried by water runoff from spills or sprayed areas”

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