~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2001]

200 poisoned in schoolroom attacks in Vietnam

HANOI - More than 200 pupils and teachers have been poisoned in a spate of chemical attacks on classrooms in Vietnam's strife-torn central highlands, officials and official media said on Friday. The attacks targetted at least seven schools across three districts of the highland province of Dak Lak between Monday and Thursday, they said. Thirty-two children were still in a "serious condition" in the main specialist hospital in the provincial capital of Buon Me Thuot Friday, the deputy chairman of the province's child protection committee, Nguyen Quy Ba, told AFP.

The victims had all suffered severe breathing problems as well as headaches and vomiting, he said. The attacks come against a backdrop of a wave of unrest among the region's mainly Christian ethnic minorities which prompted the authorities to close off the region and send in the army in early February. About 100 pupils and teachers had been "chemically poisoned" in the different incidents across the province, the deputy head of Dak Lak's governing people's committee, Nguyen Van Lang, told AFP. But another official said 116 children and staff had been "poisoned" in twin attacks in a single commune Monday. All the victims had been rushed to hospital suffering from dizziness and vomiting after the attacks on the Le Loi primary school and Nguyen Dinh Chieu secondary school in the Chu Hue commune of Ea Kar district, the communal official said, asking not to be named.

The mass-circulation Ho Chi Minh City daily, Thanh Nien (Youth), said almost 200 people had been poisoned in five separate attacks across Ea Kar and Krong Bong districts between Monday and Wednesday. The trade union newspaper, Lao Dong (Labour), said there was also another attack on a different school in Krong Bong district on Monday in which more than 40 people were "seriously injured." And the child protection official said a further 20 children were injured in an attack on the Nguyen Van Be primary school in a third district -- Krong Paek -- on Thursday.

The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the chemicals used or who they believed to be responsible. But Lao Dong said the poisonings were caused by "some strange chemical with a bad smell that had been brought into the classroom by some strangers." A doctor at the provincial hospital in Buon Me Thuot said victims reported seeing a "yellow or white powder blowing in the air" inside their classroms. The foreign ministry remained tightlipped Friday about the incidents, as it has about all aspects of the ethnic unrest.

"The Dak Lak provincial authorities said they are investigating the event," ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said. The education system has been one of the main focuses of the protests with separatist "troublemakers" leading the minorities in a boycott of the region's overwhelmingingly Vietnamese-language schools, the official media said last month. The schools targetted in this week's attacks taught in Vietnamese rather than the region's four main minority languages. The child protection official said the victims were mainly ethnic Vietnamese although the communal official said they had also included members of the Ede, Nung and Tay minorities. This week's poisonings were not the first such attacks reported by the official media during the unrest. In February shortly after violent protests in the region's main towns, Lao Dong reported that 45 children and four teachers had been treated for breathing difficulties after "chemical" attacks on two schools in a fourth district of Dak Lak -- Krong Buk.

Two teachers and five pupils were rushed to provincial or district hospitals in a serious condition, the paper said, although it put at least one of the attacks down to a delinquent pupil.

Agence France Presse - April 6, 2001.