The Enemy Within, by Maire Leadbeater is many things. It is:

• A family history
• A social history
• A history of the left-wing in Aotearoa
• A chilling reminder of the origin and continuation of the surveillance state in New Zealand, and
• A damn good read.

The book is a great example of citizen or activist authorship. The author, Maire Leadbeater, and her family are front and centre of the dark cloud of the surveillance state that has hung and still hangs over New Zealand’s “democracy”.

What better place to begin the book than the author noting that she had been spied on by the security services from the age of 10. What better place to begin than describing the role of the Locke family — Elsie, Jack, Maire, Keith and their siblings — have played in Aotearoa society over the last few decades.

And what a fitting way to end the book than with the final chapter entitled, “Person of Interest: Keith Locke”; Maire’s much-loved brother and our much-loved friend and comrade.

In between these pages is a treasure trove of commentary and stories of the development of the surveillance state in the settler colony of NZ and the impact that this has had on the lives of ordinary — no, extra-ordinary — people within this country.

The book could almost be described as a political romp from the settler colonisation of New Zealand through the growth of the workers movement and socialist and communist ideology from the late 1800s until today.

I have often deprecatingly called myself a mere footnote of history as that is all I seem to appear as in many books written about recent progressive history in New Zealand. But it was without false modesty that when Maire gave me a copy of the book a couple of weeks back, I immediately went to the index, looked up my name and found that this time I was a bit more than a footnote, but had a section of a chapter written on my interaction with the spooks.

But it was after reading this, dipping into a couple of other “person of interest” stories of people I knew such as Keith, Mike Treen, the Rosenbergs, Murray Horton and then starting the book again from the beginning did it become clear on what issues the state was paranoid about that led it to build an apparatus to spy on its own citizens.

These were issues of peace, anti-conscription, anti-nuclear, de-colonisation, unemployed workers and left trade unionism and socialist and communist thought. These are the issues that come up time and time again; essentially it was seditious or subversive to be part of any of these campaigns or ideologies.

Client state spying
The other common theme through the book is the role that the UK and more latterly the US has played in ensuring that their NZ client settler state plays by their rules, makes enemies of their enemies and spies on its own people for their “benefit”.

It was interesting to read how the “5 Eyes”, although not using that name, has been in operation as long as NZ has had a spying apparatus. In fact, the book shows that 3 of the 5 eyes forced NZ to establish its surveillance apparatus in the first place.

Maire, and her editor have arranged this book in a very reader friendly way. It is mostly chronological showing the rise of the surveillance state from the beginning of the 19th century, in dispersed with a series of vignettes of “Persons of Interest”.

Maire would probably acknowledge that this book could not have been written without the decision of the SIS to start releasing files (all beit they were heavily redacted with many missing parts) of many of us who have been spied on by the SIS over the years. So, on behalf of Maire, thank you SIS.

Maire has painstakingly gone through pages and pages of these primary source files and incorporated them into the historical narrative of the book showing what was happening in society while this surveillance was taking place.

I was especially delighted to read the history of the anti-war and conscientious objectors movement. Two years ago, almost to the day, we held the 50th anniversary of the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS); an organisation that I founded and was under heavy surveillance in 1972.

We knew a bit about previous anti-conscription struggles but Maire has provided much more context and information that we knew. It was good to read about people like John Charters, Ormand Burton and Archie Barrington as well more known resisters such as my great uncle Archibald Baxter.

Within living memory
Many of the events covered take place within my living memory. But it was wonderful to be reminded of some things I had forgotten about or to find some new gems of information about our past.

Stories around Bill Sutch, Shirley Smith, Ann and Wolfgang Rosenberg, Jack and Mary Woodward, Gerald O’Brien, Allan Brash (yes, Don’s dad), Cecil Holmes, Jack Lewin are documented as well as my contemporaries such as Don Carson, David Small, Aziz Choudry, Trevor Richards, Jane Kelsey, Nicky Hager, Owen Wilkes, Tame Iti in addition to Maire, Keith and Mike Treen.

The book finishes with a more recent history of NZ again aping the US’s so-called war on terror with the introduction of an anti and counter-terrorism mandate for the SIS and its sister agencies

The book traverses events such as the detention of Ahmed Zaoui, the raid on the Kim Dotcom mansion, the privatisation of spying to firms such as Thomson and Clark, the Urewera raids, “Hit and Run” in Afghanistan. Missing the cut was the recent police raid and removal of the computer of octogenarian, Peter Wilson for holding money earmarked for a development project in DPRK (North Korea).

When we come to the end of the book we are reminded of the horrific Christchurch mosque attack and massacre and prior to that of the bombing of Wellington Trades Hall and the Rainbow Warrior. Also, the failure of the SIS to discover Mossad agents operating in NZ on fake passports.

We cannot but ask the question of why multi-millions of dollars have been spent spying on, surveilling and monitoring peace activists, trade unionists, communists, Māori and more latterly Muslims, when the terrorism that NZ has faced has been that perpetrated on these people not by these people.

Maire notes in the book that the SIS budget for 2021 was around $100 million with around 400 FTEs employed. This does not include GCSB or other parts of the security apparatus.

Seeking subversives in wrong places
This level of money has been spent for well over 100 years looking for subversives and terrorists in the wrong place!

Finally, although dealing with the human cost of the surveillance state, the book touches on some of the lighter sides of the SIS spying. Those of us under surveillance in the 1970s and 1980s remember the amateurish phone tapping that went on at that time.

Also, the men in cars with cameras sitting outside our flats for days on end. Not in the book, but I have one memory of such a man with a camera in a car outside our flat in Wallace Street, Wellington.

After a few days some of my flatmates took pity on him and made him a batch of scones which they passed through the window of his car. He stayed for a bit longer that day but we never saw him or an alternate again.

Another issue the book picks up is the obsession that the SIS and its foreign counterparts had with counting communists in NZ. I remember that the CIA used to put out a Communist Yearbook that described and attempted to count how many members were in each of the communist parties all around the world.

In NZ, my party, the Workers Communist League, was smaller than the SUP, CPNZ and SAL, but one year near the end of our existence we were pleasantly surprised to see that the CIA had almost to a person, doubled our membership.

We could not work out why, until we realised that we all had code names as well as real names and we were getting more and more slack at using the correct one in the correct place. Anyone surveilling us, counting names, would have counted double the names that we had as members! We took the compliment.

Thank you, Maire, for this great book. Thank you and your family for your great contribution to Aotearoa society.

Hopefully the hardships and human cost that you have shown in this book will commit or recommit the rest of us to struggle for a decolonised and socialist Aotearoa within a peaceful and multi-polar world.

And as one of Jack Locke’s political guides said: “the road may be long and torturous, but the future is bright.”

Robert Reid has more than 40 years’ experience in trade unions and in community employment development in Aotearoa New Zealand. He is a former general secretary the president of FIRST Union. Much of his work has been with disadvantaged groups and this has included work with Māori, Pacific peoples and migrant communities. This was his address tonight for the launch of The Enemy Within: The Human Cost of State Surveillance in Aotearoa New Zealand, by Maire Leadbeater.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji recently lost Dr Meraia Taufa Vakatale, a monumental woman leader who broke many glass ceilings with her numerous firsts. As an educationalist, diplomat and politician, she profoundly impacted on the lives of tens of thousands in Fiji and the Pacific region, particularly young women in politics and anti-nuclear activists.

Dr Vakatale was Fiji’s first woman deputy prime minister, the first woman to be elected as a cabinet minister, the first female to be appointed as a deputy high commissioner, and the first Fijian woman principal of a secondary school in Fiji.

Dr Vakatale was also a fervent anti-nuclear activist. In 1995 she took a costly stand against her party and the then Sitiveni Rabuka government on renewed French nuclear testing on Moruroa Atoll in “French” Polynesia.

Joining a protest march against French testing led to her losing her cabinet position in the Rabuka-led government, in which she served as a member of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT) party.

She held the portfolio of Education, Science and Technology in two stints — from 1993 to 1995 and then, after being reinstated, from 1997 to 1999. In 1997, she was appointed Deputy Prime Minister.

In 2000, she resigned as President of the SVT party over the 2000 coup fallout.

She was a woman ahead of her time. Dedicated to her principles, she “paid it forward” to Pasifika generations by her fight to keep the Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

Idealism inspired thousands
Dr Taufa Vakatale’s spirited and unwavering determination, her activism, idealism and her principles inspired thousands of women and youth to fearlessly pursue their dreams.

The name Taufa Vakatale was first linked to the renowned all-girls Adi Cakobau School when she became a pioneer student there in 1948, aged 10 years. She was also the first female student at the all-male Queen Victoria School.

She completed her 6th form year at Suva Grammar School, where she became the first Fijian female to pass the NZ University Entrance. She entered the University of Auckland and in 1963 was the first Fijian woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree, privately funding her studies from her wages as a teacher in Fiji.

Taufa Vakatale went on to further studies in the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1971. On return to Fiji, she became the first Fijian woman president of the Fiji YWCA and principal of her old school, the Adi Cakobau School.

The YWCA in Fiji was the driving force of the anti-nuclear protest movement in the early 1970s, while she was president.

In her time as an educator, Dr Vakatale disciplined fairly, understood her students, and entrusted them with positive goals for their future, instructing them to “leave the world better than we found it”.

She was respected and honoured. Her feats helped ease the students’ own steps, to bring to life the Adi Cakobau School motto.

Towering moral stature
Of petite and elegant frame, in moral stature Dr Vakatale towered above many. In diplomacy she served as Fiji’s Deputy High Commissioner to the UK in 1980, while single-handedly raising her daughter to become a lawyer.

The University of St Andrews in Scotland awarded her an Honorary Doctorate of Letters for her contribution to the cause of Pacific women, while Fiji bestowed her with the Order of Fiji in 1996.

The extraordinary Dr Meraia Taufa Vakatale died on 24 June 2023, aged 84. She leaves behind her only daughter Alanieta Vakatale, three granddaughters, and many more following in her footsteps to leave this world a better place.

Thirty eight years on from the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the adoption of the Pacific nuclear-free zone treaty, the Rarotonga Treaty, and with the imminent release of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant radioactive waste into the Pacific ocean, the leadership and sacrifices of Dr Vakatale must be hailed, and her life celebrated.

Asenaca Uluiviti is a community legal officer in Auckland. She has worked as a state solicitor in Fiji and at its diplomatic mission in the UN, and has served as chairperson of Fiji YMCA, and on the NZ board of Greenpeace. She went to the Adi Cakobau School. Sadhana Sen is regional communications adviser at the Development Policy Centre. Republished from the DevPolicy blog through a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fiji recently lost Dr Meraia Taufa Vakatale, a monumental woman leader who broke many glass ceilings with her numerous firsts. As an educationalist, diplomat and politician, she profoundly impacted on the lives of tens of thousands in Fiji and the Pacific region, particularly young women in politics and anti-nuclear activists.

Dr Vakatale was Fiji’s first woman deputy prime minister, the first woman to be elected as a cabinet minister, the first female to be appointed as a deputy high commissioner, and the first Fijian woman principal of a secondary school in Fiji.

Dr Vakatale was also a fervent anti-nuclear activist. In 1995 she took a costly stand against her party and the then Sitiveni Rabuka government on renewed French nuclear testing on Moruroa Atoll in “French” Polynesia.

Joining a protest march against French testing led to her losing her cabinet position in the Rabuka-led government, in which she served as a member of the Soqosoqo ni Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT) party.

She held the portfolio of Education, Science and Technology in two stints — from 1993 to 1995 and then, after being reinstated, from 1997 to 1999. In 1997, she was appointed Deputy Prime Minister.

In 2000, she resigned as President of the SVT party over the 2000 coup fallout.

She was a woman ahead of her time. Dedicated to her principles, she “paid it forward” to Pasifika generations by her fight to keep the Pacific a nuclear-free zone.

Idealism inspired thousands
Dr Taufa Vakatale’s spirited and unwavering determination, her activism, idealism and her principles inspired thousands of women and youth to fearlessly pursue their dreams.

The name Taufa Vakatale was first linked to the renowned all-girls Adi Cakobau School when she became a pioneer student there in 1948, aged 10 years. She was also the first female student at the all-male Queen Victoria School.

She completed her 6th form year at Suva Grammar School, where she became the first Fijian female to pass the NZ University Entrance. She entered the University of Auckland and in 1963 was the first Fijian woman to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree, privately funding her studies from her wages as a teacher in Fiji.

Taufa Vakatale went on to further studies in the United Kingdom from 1963 to 1971. On return to Fiji, she became the first Fijian woman president of the Fiji YWCA and principal of her old school, the Adi Cakobau School.

The YWCA in Fiji was the driving force of the anti-nuclear protest movement in the early 1970s, while she was president.

In her time as an educator, Dr Vakatale disciplined fairly, understood her students, and entrusted them with positive goals for their future, instructing them to “leave the world better than we found it”.

She was respected and honoured. Her feats helped ease the students’ own steps, to bring to life the Adi Cakobau School motto.

Towering moral stature
Of petite and elegant frame, in moral stature Dr Vakatale towered above many. In diplomacy she served as Fiji’s Deputy High Commissioner to the UK in 1980, while single-handedly raising her daughter to become a lawyer.

The University of St Andrews in Scotland awarded her an Honorary Doctorate of Letters for her contribution to the cause of Pacific women, while Fiji bestowed her with the Order of Fiji in 1996.

The extraordinary Dr Meraia Taufa Vakatale died on 24 June 2023, aged 84. She leaves behind her only daughter Alanieta Vakatale, three granddaughters, and many more following in her footsteps to leave this world a better place.

Thirty eight years on from the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior and the adoption of the Pacific nuclear-free zone treaty, the Rarotonga Treaty, and with the imminent release of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant radioactive waste into the Pacific ocean, the leadership and sacrifices of Dr Vakatale must be hailed, and her life celebrated.

Asenaca Uluiviti is a community legal officer in Auckland. She has worked as a state solicitor in Fiji and at its diplomatic mission in the UN, and has served as chairperson of Fiji YMCA, and on the NZ board of Greenpeace. She went to the Adi Cakobau School.

Sadhana Sen is regional communications adviser at the Development Policy Centre. Republished from the DevPolicy blog through a Creative Commons licence.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Securing a nuclear-free region has been a long battle for the Pacific.

After the Second World War, the United States, along with its French and British allies, frequently tested nuclear weapons in the region.

In 1963 the British, American and Soviet governments agreed to ban atmospheric tests, but India, China and France were among those countries which did not.

Nuclear testing in French Polynesia — Moruroa Atoll and Fangataufa became the focal point for both the tests and resistance towards this military activity.

It was also during this time that the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Movement (NFIP) and the Fiji Anti-Nuclear Group (FANG) came about — they played a significant role in influencing regional politics.

Rachael Nath talked to FANG’s advocate and then treasurer Nik Naidu and began by looking back to the 1970s.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In this the first episode of A View from Afar for 2023 political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and host Selwyn Manning examine the pros and cons of New Zealand, and other APAC nations, joining the AUKUS security defence pact.

Specifically, Paul and Selwyn examine the following questions:

* What is AUKUS’s purpose?

* What are the risks to New Zealand’s national and public interest?

* What does AUKUS ‘success’ look like? What could its failure look like?

Paul presents the reasons why he believes New Zealand will not join AUKUS, and Selwyn delivers his assessment of why New Zealand must not join the Anglophile security pact.

ALSO, Paul and Selwyn will headline:

* The latest on the US Pentagon leaks. What really is happening here?

* The Global Geopolitical Theatre and how stable is Russian Federation’s president, Vladimir Putin’s regime?

INTERACTION: Paul and Selwyn invite and encourage you to interact with your questions and comments.

They recommend you do so via EveningReport’s YouTube channel, or via Facebook. Here’s the link: Youtube (remember to subscribe to the channel).

You can also keep the conversation going on this debate by clicking on one of the social media channels below:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

You can see this episode as video-on-demand, and engage with earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

RECOGNITION:

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

REVIEW: By Pat Baskett

In the days before mobile phones and emails, there were telephone trees. They grew and spread messages like leaves, thriving on the fertile ground of common beliefs and support for a particular cause.

It worked like this: one member of a group phoned 10 others who phoned another 10, each of whom phoned 10 more. On and on . . . The caller was never anonymous, relationships were established — or you simply said, “no thanks”.

The task of spreading information, before the internet, was time-consuming and labour intensive. Photocopiers, which became widely used only in the late 1970s, replaced an invaluable machine called a duplicator. You cranked the handle, one turn for each page, hoping the paper wouldn’t stick. How long did it take to do a thousand?

Next came the mail-out — folding, stuffing envelopes, sticking on stamps if funds allowed, or delivering them by hand into letterboxes.

The process was convivial, the days were busy but there was always time. There needed to be, because the issue was urgent.

The Cold War, that period of perilous mistrust between the communist Soviet Union and the “free” West, led by the United States, engulfed us in fear of a nuclear holocaust. Barely a generation separated us from the end of World War II when nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan.

The mutually assured destruction (MAD) these weapons promised was a fragile pseudo peace. In our neighbourhood peace groups, we understood the devastation a nuclear winter would bring and we worked out the radius of death and damage from a bomb dropped on our own cities.

An essential step

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

The stockpile of nuclear weapons held by each side was more than enough to eradicate all, or most, life on earth — and it still is.

Those existential threats have a familiar ring, though the cause we face today adds another dimension. So far, the benefits of almost instant communication and dissemination of information haven’t enabled the world to devise for climate disruption what activists, uniquely in New Zealand, achieved — the 1986 nuclear weapons-free legislation.

Passed by the Labour government of David Lange, it prohibits not just weapons but nuclear-powered warships — including those of our former ANZUS allies, namely the United States.

There has never been any question of rescinding this act. It remains in safe obscurity — to such an extent that I wonder how many of our Gen X contemporaries are aware of its existence.

Yet more than nuclear weapons was, and still is, at stake. The movement was called the Peace Movement because banning nukes was considered the essential step in ensuring world peace.

In 1984, 61 percent of the population were living in 86 locally declared nuclear-weapons-free zones. Academic activists came together to form Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA) and Engineers for Social Responsibility (ESR – this group now focuses on the climate disruption).

The medical fraternity formed a local branch of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

Extraordinary sleuthing talent
Much of the information which fuelled the work of all these groups was brought to light by the extraordinary sleuthing talent of one man. Owen Wilkes is described as ” . . . the intellect behind New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance” in a recent book, Peacemonger: Owen Wilkes international peace researcher, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa.

The book consists of 12 essays by friends and collaborators, themselves experts in their individual fields and who leave their own legacies of contribution to the knowledge that led to the anti-nuclear legislation.

They include physicist Dr Peter Wills who was instrumental in setting up SANA and Auckland University’s Centre for Peace Studies; investigative journalist and researcher Nicky Hager; and veteran peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater. Two contributions are by Wilkes’s colleagues at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo Norway, Dr Ingvar Botnen and Dr Nils Petter Gleditsch.

Wilkes spent six years from 1976 working in Oslo and also at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The work is edited by Mark Derby and Wilkes’s partner May Bass. While a traditional biography with a single author may have avoided the repetition of information, the various personal anecdotes and responses result in the portrayal of an unconventional, highly talented individual.

In his introduction, Derby sums up Wilkes’s life: “Although invariably non-violent, politically non-aligned and generally law-abiding, Owen encountered official opposition, harassment and intimidation in various forms as he became internationally known for the quality and impact of his peace research.”

Wilkes was born in Christchurch in 1940 and died in Kawhia in 2005. In his early adult years he worked as an entomologist on various projects supported by the US military, including at McMurdo base in the Antarctic. These, he discovered, were connected with a US military germ warfare project.

Using official information laws
His gift was to see through, and behind, the information government made public about our relationship to our official allies, essentially the US. To do this he used our own official information laws and the American equivalent, plus any public reports to congress and US budget reports he could lay hands on.

Rubbish bags also feature in a couple of accounts.

What now may be stored as megabytes of information consists of boxes and folders of carefully catalogued material, the bulk of which is lodged at the Alexander Turnbull Library (with information also at the university libraries of Auckland and Canterbury).

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

Wilkes documented how in many cases what was billed as civilian also had profound military implications. This was nowhere more clear than in the anti-bases campaign which Murray Horton chronicles — bases being sites in remote locations for monitoring or receiving satellite information, some of which new technology has rendered obsolete.

These include Mt St John near Lake Tekapo and Black Birch near Blenheim, and those still operating at Tangimoana in the Manawatu and at Waihopai, also near Blenheim.

Wilkes’s unconventional appearance and lifestyle — he famously wore shorts in sub-zero temperatures when skiing in Norway — made him a target for accusations of being a communist, a not uncommon slander of the peace movement.

Having sharp eyes
Maire Leadbeater, in her account of his long investigation by the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service, suggests his only “crime” was “to have sharp eyes and the ability to put two and two together”.

Yet there were more conventional sides to his interests. One was archaeology, beginning in his 1962 when he worked as a field archaeologist for the Canterbury Museum. This continued after he left the peace movement in the early 1990s and worked for the Waikato Department of Conservation in a variety of jobs including filing archaeological and historical records.

The truth Wilkes was committed to appears, in retrospect, somehow simpler than that of the struggle towards a fossil-free future and a liveable planet for all. Peace is a part of this and the nukes are still there.

• Peacemonger – Owen Wilkes: International Peace Researcher, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby. Published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa (2022). This article was first published by Newsroom is republished with the author’s and Newsroom’s permission. Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie is one of the contributing authors.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The new French High Commissioner to French Polynesia has heard calls for support and compensation for atolls close to the test sites of France’s nuclear weapons tests.

High Commissioner Eric Spitz has been on his first tour of the outer islands since arriving from France last month to discuss France’s efforts to overcome the test legacy in line with an undertaking of President Emmanuel Macron to “turn the page” over the tests.

Spitz has been visiting Mangareva and Tureia, which are among the inhabited atolls closest to the former test sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa, used for more than 190 tests between 1966 and 1996.

The High Commissioner is travelling with the project manager for the French prime minister on the consequences of nuclear tests, Michel Marquer, and the head physician of the monitoring Department of the Nuclear Test Centres of the General Defence Directorate, Dr Marie-Pascale Petit.

The government delegation has been updating the atolls’ residents on the latest findings about residual radiation and the risks emanating from the test sites, weakened by dozens of underground detonations.

The mayor of Tureia, Tevahine Brander, said she would like to have support from France because some locals had given their lives for France while it was developing its nuclear deterrent.

“Perhaps the French state has taken a big step today on the nuclear issue, but my people will always remain vigilant on this subject. Our elders have endured a lot of suffering,” she said.

The mayor of Rikitea on Mangareva, Vai Gooding. also called for compensation, with locals telling the visitors of ongoing concerns.

‘Victims who have died’
Jerry Gooding, who is with the anti-nuclear organisation Association 193, told Tahiti-infos that “in Rikitea, there are victims who have died, and their children have cancer too, although they were born after the nuclear tests.

“This is why the association is asking for a transgenerational study into the genetic impact of the tests.

“Macron went to ask forgiveness in Algeria but did not ask forgiveness from the Polynesians. He must come and apologise to the Polynesians,” he added.

A resident, Benoit Urarii, said “everyone knows that Hiroshima was catastrophic, and everyone knew that it was dangerous for the population. General De Gaulle was aware and chose Moruroa because there were fewer people.

“But it is close to us, so we are the first victims. The first test in 1966 was catastrophic for us Mangarevans. And we got infected. Nobody can deny that.

“We were not asked for our opinion, and we knew exactly how dangerous nuclear tests were.”

The medical expert Dr Petit said there was cancer before nuclear testing.

‘Cancer not only due to nuclear tests’
“It will exist afterwards, and we all know that cancer is not only due to nuclear tests. Nobody is able to say that this is a cancer due to nuclear testing or not. We do not yet have a marker that will make the difference,” she said.

Concern was also raised about a possible collapse of the test area on Moruroa atoll, but Dr Petit said movements were gradually diminishing, leaving a very low probability of a sliding of a sediment plate.

She said whatever happened, the possible swells were likely to be weaker than what Tureia had already experienced.

Doubt persists as residents point to the complex and expensive technology in use to monitor the area around Moruroa, which is still a military “no-go” zone.

Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were clean and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

Plans are afoot to build a memorial site in Pape’ete, but a resident in Tureia said it should be on his atoll.

“The centre should be here, it’s more honest. But not a memorial for those who have taken advantage of all these years of nuclear testing to enrich themselves and stuff their bank accounts,” he said.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Following the publication of the book Toxic some 9 months ago and President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to French Polynesia last July, the response from the French administration has been to send French nuclear experts to Tahiti.

Their mission was to give clear and transparent answers about the state of former nuclear test sites among other topics. It was a way to counter the book’s anti-official version of the CEA’s (Centre d’Experimentation Atomique) claim of “clean and non-contaminating radioactivity” on both atolls.

The Commission of information created for those former sites of nuclear tests of the Pacific, was made up of 3 French civil servants involved in the controversial Paris roundtable — also called Reko Tika — organised by President Macron last July.

In a media conference, they talked about radiological and geo-mechanical surveillance of the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. They came with more scientific expertise and data that seemed to dispel the original idea of “clear and transparent answers”.

As far as the environment was concerned around those former nuclear sites, the conclusion was that the sites were much safer now after the presence of caesium-137 (a radioactive isotope of caesium formed as one of the more common products of nuclear fission) was noticed to be less year by year in all parts of the environment.

To “prove” their case of an independent and transparent study, they took samples of beef meat, whole milk or coconut juice from both atolls and are readily available to the population and analysed those samples.

Their results showed that the levels of radioactive concentration were far less than the “maximum levels admissible” — or whatever that means for the Ma’ohi who are not versed in the scientific jargon.

Artificial radioactive fallout level ‘low’
As for the health of the population, they reassured the people from the atolls that the level of toxicity of artificial radioactive fallout measured from 2019 to 2020 was extremely low, according to the data collected by the Institute of Radioprotection and Nuclear Safety (IRNS).

They established that the overall efficient dose (external exposition, internal exposition by ingestion and inhalation) of radioactivity was evaluated at 1,4 mSv (the measure of radiation exposure) in Mā’ohi Nui — which is two times lower than in France.

An even stronger reassurance was offered to the media when the question of a possible collapse of the northern part of the atoll of Moruroa was mentioned. The French experts replied that such a disastrous scenario was extremely unlikely, because the geo-mechanical system Telsite 2 put in place in 2000, would detect signs of unusual activities weeks beforehand.

Notwithstanding their initial answer, they added that even in the worst-case scenario, preventative measures would be taken to evacuate the population of Moruroa, and Tureia would not be hit by this improbable landslide.

A reassurance that clearly leaves doubt on whether Moruroa is at all safe.

When asked by one of the local journalists, Vaite Pambrun, why the atolls were not “retroceded” (ceded back) to their people now that it is “safe”, the delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault was at pains to explain that it was not possible because plutonium was not buried deep enough under the coral layer, and for safety reasons the French state still needed to monitor the atolls.

A somehow contradictory response that does not surprise the people who are used to the rhetoric used by the French state for the last 50 years.

France seems to offer very reassuring measures and answers, but the populations have learnt in the past that the word of the French state must be taken with a lot of mistrust and scepticism especially when it comes to nuclear matters.

France trying to wipe out nuclear traces from Polynesian memory

Independence leader Oscar Temaru, and former president of Tahiti, was quick to organise a press conference where he criticised the conclusions reached by the nuclear experts who seemed to contradict their findings about the safety of the atolls that still needed more monitoring, hence the refusal to retrocede.

After the last Paris roundtable, Temaru accused the French state and the local government — which he calls the local “collabos” (alluding to the French who collaborated with the Germans during the Second World War) to try “to wipe out the last evidence and vestiges that constitute the history of nuclear colonisation by the army and the money”.

According to Temaru, there is a trust crisis against the local government of territorial President Eduard Fritch and the French state that is going to last for a long time.

Those strong words also came after the decision was taken to completely destroy the last nuclear concrete shelter on the atoll of Tureia, wiping out for ever any traces of nuclear presence.

This decision is reminiscent of the one taken by the same French state to raze to the ground the two nuclear shelters used by the army on Mangareva.

By the same occasion, the hangar with the flimsy protection of corrugated iron used for the local population during the nuclear tests was also demolished. All those structures were pulled down in the early 2000s.

Father Auguste Ube Carlson, president of the anti-nuclear lobby Association 193, has also denounced the rhetoric used by the French state which “pretends’ to bring some new answers that have a “sound of deja-vu and that do not fool any of the populations who have suffered through the nuclear era”.

According to one of the Association 193 spokespeople, France is telling local populations that all is well in the best of worlds and there is nothing to worry about.

A more mitigated reaction

Local historian Jean-Marc Regnault conceded that it has been a struggle to get the French state to give access to files that at one point were declassified and then re-classified to now be reopened to the public which he considers a victory.

He does not share the same stance taken by Oscar Temaru regarding the wiping out of the last atomic shelter in Tureia. According to the historian, the shelter is a hazard to the population of Tureia as it contains asbestos and therefore needs to be destroyed.

Regnault positions himself as a researcher who, like any other member of the public, will be able to write the history of the nuclear era thanks to all those thousands of documents now available to be consulted, unless classified as state secrets.

He sees the history of a nation not in terms of buildings but in terms of what can be written and taught to the younger generations. The destruction of the building does not equal the wiping-out of a nation’s memory.

He finds it remarkable that teachers will have the material to teach the history of the atomic tests in Mā’ohi Nui, which was one the tenants of the Tavini party when they were at the helm of the country in 2004.

It is up to the women and men of Ma’ohi Nui to realise their dreams of writing the history of their islands by consulting those archives, especially the military ones and not be forced to only hear one narrative, that of the French state.

There is a movement toward more transparency, according to Regnault.

What about the conclusions drawn by the book Toxic?
The Delegate to Nuclear Safety M. Bugault, has been particularly dismissive of the book Toxic. He says that it is clear that the calculations based on the simulations are wrong and he rejected the deductions made by the book that the French state have played down the impacts of nuclear tests fallout on the Polynesians.

However, he admitted that 6 nuclear tests did not have favourable weather forecasts and generated radioactive fallout that led to doses “below the limit accepted by those working on the nuclear sites” but “higher than the doses accepted by the public”.

This is the reason why it is absolutely legitimate for people who have been contaminated to seek compensation.

He tells the press that the calculations and the investigation by Disclose wrongly contradict those made by the CEA in 2006 where the data and the mode of calculations were extremely technical and scientific and 450 pages long.

He suggested that those who were involved in the research and the publishing of Toxic were not versed enough in the technical jargon of the final document released by the CEA.
It is not enough to tell the truth but it must be accessible to the public, according to Bugault.

The book Toxic fails to explain in a clear and simple way how its calculations were carried out and achieved. He promised that in April 2022 the anti-Toxic book will be published by the CEA on Tahiti.

Ena Manuireva, born in Mangareva (Gambier islands) in Ma’ohi Nui (French Polynesia), is a language revitalisation researcher at Auckland University of Technology and is currently completing his doctorate on the Mangarevan language. He is also a campaigner for nuclear reparations justice from France over the 193 tests staged in Polynesia over three decades and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

RADIO 531pi Breakfast Talanoa host Ma’a Brian Sagala has talked about the Rarotonga Treaty with Café Pacific publisher David Robie.

It was hugely significant for the Pacific. It was sort of like a threshold for the Pacific really standing up to the big powers and predated New Zealand’s nuclear-free law.

It was a huge step forward. It was not only a declaration against France, which was detonating nuclear weapons at the time, but also against the US and Britain that had also conducted many nuclear tests in the Pacific.

The Treaty of Rarotonga formalise the Pacific nuclear-free zone on 6 August 1985 and New Zealand’s own New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act followed two years later on 8 June 1987.

David also talks about the Rainbow Warrior’s humanitarian voyage to Rongelap to help the islanders move to another home across the Pacific Ocean. He is the author of the book Eyes of Fire about nuclear testing in the Pacific.

• Eyes of Fire microsite