[lbo-talk] adventures in "outrage"

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Mon Jul 31 12:43:53 PDT 2006


On 7/28/06, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>
> I had forgotten the tale of the North Vietnamese Leprosy hospital, the
> largest and most modern in the world. Its location well known and
> clearly marked.
>
> The U.S. bombed it to rubble.
>
> The staff and patients formed a convoy of trucks -- also clearly marked
> because they thought the u.s. bombing must have been by mistake.
>
> The U.S. bombed the convoy. (Perhaps twice -- the details are fuzzy in
> my mind now.)
>
> Carrol

The leprosy hospital was at Quynh Lap and I remember the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal dealt with it extensively, along with other medical facilities targeted by U.S. bombing.

The thing that made this particular bombing so important as an example of a U.S. war crime was that the leprosy hospital had to be targeted intentionally in order to be destroyed since for the usual medical reasons there was no other facility but the leprosorium in the immediate vicinity. This is why Quynh Lap sticks in my mind. When I got around to reading some of the documents of the Russell Tribunal in the mid-seventies, when I was in my teens, the story of Quynh Lap made its mark on me and I have never forgotten it.

Unfortuntely fire and water has destroyed many of my books from my youth and this report is no longer in my library. But to my surprise many documents from the Russell Tribunal are now posted somewhere on the internet. Thus after searching for "Quynh Lap" on google I found the following:

http://www.vietnamese-american.org/a15.html

The first attack [of Quynh Lap] was 12 June 1965, at 8 P.M. Numerous American planes flew over and dropped hundreds of bombs and rockets on the leprosorium; they came back several times to drop more bombs. In these raids, 139 patients were killed, 9 doctors and members of the staff were killed and 100 other persons were wounded.

As far back as 14 July 1965, the DRV Ministry of Public Health {159} had made a public statement drawing attention to this destruction, and to the nature of Quynh Lap as a place set aside for the treatment of leprosy and for research into this illness. In spite of this notice the air raids have continued and even intensified. On 6 May 1966, planes attacked new buildings of the leprosorium of Quynh Lap which had been relocated to a place close to the commune of Quynh Lap. This raid resulted in thirty-four dead and thirty wounded, ten of them seriously.

The Ministry of Public Health published on 16 May 1966, another statement pointing out that these buildings constituted a leprosorium. Between 1965 and 1966, the leprosorium of Quynh Lap has undergone thirty-nine attacks. We are emphatic that this leprosorium is situated in a completely isolated area, far from strategic routes, town, industrial centre, or military or so-called military targets. The Quynh Lap leprosorium, we must also point out to the Tribunal, is internationally known among the medical fraternity who practise in tropical diseases, and it was well and prominently marked with the sign of the Red Cross.



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