Laos: legacy of a secret

摘要

We rightly think of the 7 July 2007 attacks in London in which 52 people lost their lives as a terrorist atrocity. But our ability to imagine the human and bio-medical consequences would fail if that act was repeated over and over again, week in week out. In Laos between 1964 and 1973 that is exactly what happened. America secretly dropped two billion kilograms of ordnance on that country: a B52 load of bombs every six minutes, 24 hours a day for nine years. It was the heaviest aerial bombardment in history and the legacy of that secret war is still being felt.