The future of the Manawanui wreckage and potential compensation payments remain a major talking point in Samoa.

The Royal New Zealand Navy vessel ran aground on a reef off the south coast of Upolu in October last year and sank.

New Zealand paid NZ$6 million to the Samoan government over it — however communities are yet to see any money.

Tafitoala village has been directly affected by the maritime disaster.

Resident Fagailesau Afaaso Junior Saleupu said the New Zealand High Commission and Samoa government held a short meeting regarding potential compensation options this week.

Three options were tabled around the distribution process. One involved the Samoa government being responsible for the distribution of payments among families and affected businesses. Another involved the district authority being responsible for distributing payments.

The Samoa government has previously said it intends to finalise the compensation process once it passes a budget, which it reportedly intends to do at the end of this month.

Tight timeframe
Fagailesau said this week’s meeting, which involved representatives from Samoa’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, seemed to be on a tight timeframe.

“It’s not enough time for us to raise questions and . . . give them our opinion about the problem.”

He believed the Samoa government should be responsible for distributing the money directly to those affected and said many people were concerned that the wreckage remained on the reef.

“I don’t think it’s good for us in the long run.”

Fagailesau also said many locals feared the compensation amount — which equates to WST$10 million — simply was not enough to manage the long-term impacts of the wreckage on the environment.

He also said families in Tafitoala had been severely limited by the 2km prohibition zone around the wreckage.

“My village — we are fighting for a big amount for us because we are the . . .  people that are really affected.

“The 2km zone — it covers the area that we access for fishing every day. We’re eating tinned fish.”

More meetings
Fagailesau also said the Samoa government told locals it intended to hold more meetings over compensation in the future.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said he had not been aware of any locals eating tinned fish due to the wreckage.

Peters spoke to RNZ Pacific Waves about the Manawanui. He reiterated that the Sāmoa government was leading the ongoing process around compensation and the wreckage, which included any discussion around its removal.

He also denied there was any cover-up over the environmental impacts of the wreckage.

To date, no environmental report on the impacts of Manawanui sinking has been made public.

“It’s not a matter of being covert or secretive about it,” Peters said.

“It’s analysing what we’re dealing with, and I think that probably better explains what’s happening here.”

Open and transparent
Peters said the New Zealand government had been open and transparent in it’s dealing and continued to work with the Sāmoa government over the Manawanui incident.

“This terrible tragedy happened, which we massively regret — no one more than me.”

But Samoa surf guide Manu Percival said the New Zealand government’s behaviour had not been good enough.

For months, Percival had been in contact with the New Zealand High Commission about compensation for the boat fuel he used in the immediate aftermath of the disaster to assist with clean-up.

“It’s real crazy. No one’s got any compensation.”

He also said it had been difficult to get any concrete answers from the Sāmoa government over the future of the wreckage and compensation.

“It’s kind of getting tossed between two different government departments.”

Percival believed New Zealand should remove its wreckage and that the compensation amount paid to the Samoa government was “an absolute joke”.

However, Peters said the NZ$6 million was the amount requested by the Samoa government.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

People on Guam are “disappointed” and “heartbroken” that radiation exposure compensation is not being extended to them, says the president of the Pacific Association for Radiation Survivors (PARS), Robert Celestial.

He said they were disappointed for many reasons.

“Congress seems to not understand that we are no different than any state,” he told RNZ Pacific.

“We are human beings, we are affected in the same way they are. We are suffering the same way, we are greatly disappointed, heartbroken,” Celestial said.

The extension to the United States Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was part of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” passed by Congress on Friday (Thursday, Washington time).

Downwind compensation eligibility would extend to the entire states of Utah, Idaho and New Mexico, but Guam – which was included in an earlier version of the bill – was excluded.

All claimants are eligible for US$100,000.

Attempt at amendment
Guam Republican congressman James Moylan attempted to make an amendment to include Guam before the bill reached the House floor earlier in the week.

“Guam has become a forgotten casualty of the nuclear era,” Moylan told the House Rules Committee.

“Federal agencies have confirmed that our island received measurable radiation exposure as a result of US nuclear testing in the Pacific and yet, despite this clear evidence, Guam remains excluded from RECA, a program that was designed specifically to address the harm caused by our nation’s own policies.

“Guam is not asking for special treatment we are asking to be treated with dignity equal to the same recognition afforded to other downwind communities across our nation.”

Moylan said his constituents are dying from cancers linked to radiation exposure.

From 1946 to 1962, 67 nuclear bombs were detonated in the Marshall Islands, just under 2000 kilometres from Guam.

New Mexico Democratic congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández supported Moylan, who said it was “sad Guam and other communities were not included”.

Colorado, Montana excluded
The RECA extension also excluded Colorado and Montana; Idaho was also for a time but this was amended.

Celestial said he had heard different rumours about why Guam was not included but nothing concrete.

“A lot of excuses were saying that it’s going to cost too much. You know, Guam is going to put a burden on finances.”

But Celestial said the cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office for Guam to be included was US$560 million while Idaho was $1.4 billion.

“[Money] can’t be the reason that Guam got kicked out because we’re the lowest on the totem pole for the amount of money it’s going to cost to get us through in the bill.”

Certain zip codes
The bill also extends to communities in certain zip codes in Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alaska, who were exposed to nuclear waste.

Celestial said it’s taken those states 30 years to be recognised and expects Guam to be eventually paid.

He said Moylan would likely now submit a standalone bill with the other states that were not included.

If that fails, he said Guam could be included in nuclear compensation through the National Defense Authorization Act in December, which is for military financial support.

The RECA extension includes uranium workers employed from 1 January 1942 to 31 December 1990.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An initial hearing of a class action against mining giant Rio Tinto over the toxic legacy of the Panguna copper mine on the autonomous island of Bougainville has been held in Papua New Guinea.

The lawsuit against Rio Tinto and its subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) is seeking compensation, expected to be in the billions of dollars, for what plaintiffs allege is historic mismanagement of the massive open copper-and-gold mine between 1972 and 1989.

More than 5000 claimants backed by anonymous investors are seeking damages for the destruction that sparked a 10-year-long civil war.

The Panguna mine closed in 1989 after anger about pollution and the unequal distribution of profits sparked a landowner rebellion. As many as 20,000 people — or 10 percent of Bougainville’s population — are estimated to have died in the violence that followed between pro-inependence rebels and PNG.

Although a peace process was brokered in 2001 with New Zealand support, deep political divisions remain and there has never been remediation for Panguna’s environmental and psychological scars.

The initial hearing for the lawsuit took place on Wednesday, a day ahead of schedule, at the National Court in Port Moresby, said Matthew Mennilli, a partner at Sydney-based Morris Mennilli.

Mennilli, who is from one of two law firms acting on behalf of the plaintiffs, said he was unable to provide further details as court orders had not yet been formally entered.

A defence submitted
Rio Tinto did not respond to specific questions regarding this week’s hearing, but said in a statement on September 23 it had submitted a defence and would strongly defend its position in the case.

The lawsuit is made up by the majority of villagers in the affected area of Bougainville, an autonomous province within PNG, situated some 800km east of the capital Port Moresby.

At least 71 local clan leaders support the claim, with the lead claimant named as former senior Bougainville political leader and chief of the Basking Taingku clan Martin Miriori.

The lawsuit is being bankrolled by Panguna Mine Action, a limited liability company that stands to reap between 20-40 percent of any payout depending on how long the case takes, according to litigation funding documents cited by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

While the lawsuit has support from a large number of local villagers, some observers fear it could upset social cohesion on Bougainville and potentially derail another long-standing remediation effort.

The class action is running in parallel with an independent assessment of the mine’s legacy, supported by human rights groups and the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), and funded by Rio Tinto.

Rio Tinto agreed in 2021 to take part in the Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment after the Melbourne-based Human Rights Law Centre filed a complaint with the Australian government, on behalf of Bougainville residents.

Legacy of destruction
The group said the Anglo-Australian mining giant has failed to address Panguna’s legacy of destruction, including the alleged dumping of more than a billion tonnes of mine waste into rivers that continues to affect health, the environment and livelihoods.

The assessment, which is being done by environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech Coffey, includes extensive consultation with local communities and the first phase of the evaluation is expected to be delivered next month.

ABG President Ishmael Toroama has called the Rio Tinto class action the highest form of treason and an obstacle to the government’s economic independence agenda.

“This class action is an attack on Bougainville’s hard-fought unity to date,” he said in May.

In February, the autonomous government granted Australian-listed Bougainville Copper a five-year exploration licence to revive the Panguna mine site.

The Bougainville government is hoping its reopening will fund independence. In a non-binding 2019 referendum — which was part of the 2001 peace agreement — 97.7 percent of the island’s inhabitants voted for independence.

PNG leaders resist independence
But PNG leaders have resisted the result, fearful that by granting independence it could encourage breakaway movements in other regions of the volatile Pacific island country.

Former New Zealand Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae was appointed last month as an independent moderator to help the two parties agree on terms of a parliamentary vote needed to ratify the referendum.

In response to the class action, Rio Tinto said last month its focus remained on “constructive engagement and meaningful action with local stakeholders” through the legacy assessment.

The company said it was “seeking to partner with key stakeholders, such as the ABG and BCL, to design and implement a remedy framework.”

Copyright ©2015-2024, BenarNews. Republished with the permission of BenarNews.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“We want grants and not concessional loans,” is the crisp message from Papua New Guinea businesses directly affected by the Black Wednesday looting four months ago.

The businesses, which lost millions after the January 10 rioting and looting, say they need grants as part of the government’s Restock and Rebuild assistance — and not more loans.

This is the message delivered by the PNG Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Monday after news that the national government has so far given K7 million (NZ$3.2 million) in funding to several affected companies to pay staff salaries.

President Ian Tarutia said the business coalition representing impacted businesses would be meeting with the Chief Secretary and his inter-agency team this week to find out when the assistance will be given.

Their message at this crucial meeting will be the same — no loans!

“The real impact assistance that is truly beneficial is rebuilding and restocking,” Tarutia said.

“We will meet with the chief secretary hopefully this week to get an update on this component of the government’s relief assistance to affected businesses.

Concessional rate loans
Tarutia explained that an initial National Executive Council decision was to provide loans at concessional rates and managed through the National Development Bank.

“Business Coalition’s response was grants and not loans are the preferred assistance. Meeting with the Chief Secretary this week hopefully can resolve this.”

He also indicated that in the initial impact by businesses compiled in late January, the estimated cost for rebuild and restock covering loss of property, cost of clean up, loss of goods was K774 million.

“This was for 64 businesses mainly in Port Moresby but a few in Goroka, Rabaul, Kundiawa and Kavieng,” he said.

“Out of this K774 million, an amount of K273 million was submitted as needed immediately.

“Business Coalition met last Saturday morning. Business houses are looking forward to meeting Chief Secretary Pomaleu and his inter-agency team this week to find out when the assistance for rebuilding destroyed properties and restocking looted inventory will be given.”

Tarutia acknowledged that so far, the government had paid out approximately K7 million in wage support for businesses which includes eight businesses including CPL.

Businesses acknowledge the wage support to date and are appreciative on behalf of their affected staff.

Dale Luma is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

After two weeks of negotiations at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference (COP27) talks at an Egyptian resort, it is now down to the wire.

Diplomats have created proposals on the controversial loss and damage agenda that will be decided upon by politicians.

Robust discussions at the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh have seen many collaborations and discord resulting in negotiators not reaching agreement on funding that would see vulnerable countries compensated for climate change-fuelled disasters caused by developed nations.

A key milestone was reached on Friday morning (New Zealand time), when the European Union shifted its position to support the G7 and China which includes Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and the Pacific.

The EU along with the United States pushed back this agenda as it feared being put on the hook for payments of billions of dollars for decades or even centuries to come.

However, developing nations and their allies have been able to stir up support, with major voting in favour for the set up of a loss and damage facility. Australia has chosen to keep the discussion open while the US maintained an isolated position, showing no flexibility.

Now, there are three options on the table for politicians to agree upon and they were due to be debated over the next few hours.

Climate change with Al Jazeera.

The Pacific’s call
The Pacific through the G7 and China has stressed the urgency of establishing a loss and damage framework at this COP.

Samoa Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata’afa today called on the nations to place the same level of global urgency as seen for the covid-19 pandemic to meeting the 1.5 Celsius degree pathway.

Fiame said more action was needed on upscaling ambition on funding for loss and damage and must remain firmly on the table as nations continued to witness increasing occurrences and severity of climate change impacts everywhere.

Option one also entails need for loss and damage to be a separate funding from adaptation and mitigation.

Fiji’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Satyendra Prasad, explained there were gaps in trying to conflate the funding intended for other purposes with compensation as they were not the same thing.

Prasad said vulnerable people in the Pacific “are facing the loss of livelihoods, of land and of fundamental cultural and traditional assets”. These were non-economic losses that could not be compensated through adaptation and mitigation funds.

Financial support for loss and damage must be additional to adaptation funding but also differently structured. Option one calls for existing funding pledges to be made operational in the interim for vulnerable nations.

Short notice funding
Pacific’s Adviser for Loss and Damage Daniel Lund said when responding to damage caused by extreme weather events, finance needed to be available at short notice.

Lund added that current funding available was for project-based support under the Green Climate Fund which took around one year from proposal submission to receiving the first disbursement of funds,

“Something like that doesn’t work when the loss and damage are immediate.”

Republic of Palau’s Minister of State, Gustav Aitaro, in his address to world leaders, said, “every time we have a typhoon, we have to shift funds and budgets allocated for breakfast for students to address the damage. We have to shift funds from our hospital to address the damage, and it becomes such a big burden for us to look for funds to replace that.”

He pleaded with parties to understand the Pacific’s situation as it was a matter of life and death and their very existence depended on it.

“How do I explain to young kids in Palau, the children who live on that atoll, that their homes have been damaged by typhoons and we have to rebuild them over again and again? If they ask me why is it a recurring situation, what do I tell them? Who do we blame?

“Our islands, our oceans are our culture, it’s our identity in this world. I’m sure our developing countries share the same concerns and this is why we are asking them to help.”

Kicking the can down the road
Australia and the US have put forward options two and three for consideration. They propose a soft power influence.

They are proposing more time be given to iron out the finer details to establish a loss and damage finance in COP28 and operationalise the funding by COP29 in 2024.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen as saying: “The world is unlikely to come to an agreement at COP27 over contentious calls for wealthy nations to pay loss and damage compensation to developing countries.”

He said: “Let’s just see how the internal discussions go. But I mean, I doubt very much it’ll be a full agreement on that at this COP.”

The two countries who have spent time in the wilderness of climate diplomacy, have also proposed developed nations continue to tap into climate funding made available through bilateral and multilateral arrangements.

This proposal also suggests that any funding made available for vulnerable states can be channelled through developed nation governments, proposing it does not need to be faciliated by a governing body like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The Pacific feels this is problematic. Pacific negotiator Sivendra Michael explained: “This is volatile as it depends on the government of the day.”

Finding a way for more capital
Time reports US climate envoy John Kerry as saying: “We have to find a way for more capital to flow into developing countries.”

Kerry added: “I think it’s important that the developed world recognises that a lot of countries are now being very negatively impacted as a consequence of the continued practice of how the developed world chooses to propel its vehicles, heat its homes, light its businesses, produce food.

“Much of the world is obviously frustrated.”

While the US allowed loss and damage finance to be added to the meeting’s formal agenda for the first time, it took the unusual step of demanding that a footnote be included to exclude the ideas of liability for historic emitters or compensation for countries affected by that pollution.

World leaders will now spend the next few hours deciding on which option to take on loss and damage finance.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The French nuclear compensation commission CIVEN says that last year it paid out US$16.6 million to victims of France’s nuclear weapons tests.

France tested 193 atomic weapons in French Polynesia over three decades from 1966 to 1996 after abandoning its testing regime in Algeria.

In its report for 2021, the commission said it had processed 199 applications of which 46 percent were found to be eligible for compensation.

It said a further 217 compensation claims were filed last year, which was an increase of 79 over 2020.

Until 2010 when a compensation law was passed, France had claimed that its weapons tests were clean and caused no harm to human health.

The provisions of the law have been controversial because of the large number of rejected claims, which led to amendments.

In 2020, CIVEN said it had paid out US$30m to victims of France’s nuclear weapons test since 2010.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

Moana activists, campaigners, scholars, researchers and Green MPs gathered today in a show of solidarity for Tahiti’s Ma’ohi Lives Matter rally at Auckland University of Technology and vowed to work towards independence for the French-occupied Pacific territory.

A live feed from the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete was screened and simultaneous events happened across the Pacific, such as in Fiji.

Many of the Auckland participants were stalwarts from the early days of the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement from the 1970s and 1980s and declared their support for pro-independence Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru.

Many speakers protested that Tahitians were still awaiting compensation for the legacy of health problems and the devastation of Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls during 30 years of testing and 193 nuclear blasts, both atmospheric and underground.

The speakers said it was appalling that serious attempts for compensation and a state apology had not happened in the two decades since the tests ended in 1996.

However, reports from Paris at the weekend hinted that the French Polynesian President had indicated that France had for the first time conceded it should compensate Tahiti’s social security agency CPS for the medical costs caused by the tests.

The agency had repeatedly said that since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation from the tests.

Dancers at the Mā’ohi Lives Matter rally in Pape’ete, Tahiti, today. Video: David Robie/APR

French PM’s letter
Tahiti’s territorial President Édouard Fritch said he received a letter from French Prime Minister Jean Castex, in which he admitted that the demand for a re-imbursement of the outlays was legitimate.

Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, a former leader of the NFIP movement, asked the forum what could be done by people from Aotearoa New Zealand to give support for Ma’ohi Nui (Tahiti) now.

Ena Manuireva, one of the rally organisers and a doctoral researcher into the nuclear tests at AUT, gave an explanation of the current situation and made suggestions for action.

He said it was important to demonstrate solidarity around the Pacific region and to show Paris that there were wider reactions.

Another organiser, Tony Fala, also gave suggestions of how to support the kaupapa of Temaru and the Tahitian activists.

Participants honoured the passing of two great Moana wāhine leaders who had died recently recently passed away — Polynesian Panther Miriama Rauhihi-Ness and Hawai’ian academic Dr Haunani-Kay Trask, both fellow NFIP activists of Halkyard-Harawira.

“We wish to acknowledge all tangata whenua and Kānaka Maoli who are present here today,” said Fala.

Deep-sea mining
Greenpeace campaigner James Hita, coordinator of the project against deep-sea mining, also spoke of the environmental challenge facing the region after a recent move by the Nauru government to activate “fast-tracking”.

Environmental journalist, author and academic Dr David Robie denounced the “decades of lies, bluster and cover-ups” by French authorities, saying recent allegations published by the book Toxique and investigative website The Moruroa Files were a “game changer” forcing action from Paris.

Green MPs Teanu Tuiono and Golriz Ghahraman were also among the speakers, and the rally’s MC was Samoan minister and community activist Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua.

The rally participants acknowledged the connection between indigenous struggles in Mā’ohi Nui, Aotearoa, Australia, Hawai’i, Kanaky New Caledonia, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Rapa Nui, Solomons, Vanuatu, West Papua, and the rest of Moana.

They also spoke out in support of the Māori struggles on Aotea Island, Ihumatāo (Auckland), Putiki (Waiheke Island), and Shelly Bay (Wellington).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A co-founder of the Polynesian Panthers says the government should allow overstayers to remain in New Zealand after it formally apologises for the Dawn Raids later this month.

An emotional Minister for Pacific Peoples, ‘Aupito William Sio, also revealed today harrowing details of his own family’s subjection to the notorious police raids of the 1970s.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday acknowledged the racist policies of National and Labour governments that targeted overstayers by their Pacific ethnicity, despite those of European descent making up the majority of illegal immigrants at that time.

Ardern will apologise on behalf of the state at a commemoration event in the Auckland Town Hall on June 26.

But social Justice advocate and co-founder of Polynesian Panthers Will ‘Ilolahia says it is not enough for the government to belatedly apologise and that any so-called compensation for the injustice should be paid by opening up pathways to residency for people now in similar circumstances.

“There has been terror in our society that money can’t pay for,” he said. “What is more beneficial for our people in society is pathways to residency for the present overstayers here.

“We’ve got overstayers here whose children are head boys and head girls. We’re got overstayers here those children have the potential to represent our country, but they can’t because they have no papers.

Qualification for citizen
“But the fact is they pay tax and surely that is enough qualification to be a citizen of New Zealand… We’re only talking about 10,000 people here.”

The Polynesian Panthers was formed in June 1971 to campaign for equality, justice and indigenous rights.

Another of its co-founders, Manase Lua, told Morning Report that something more meaningful then just words needed to be offered if justice was to be truly served.

The Pasifika leader, whose parents were targeted in the Dawn Raids, said residency would provide a just and fair settlement of past grievances, so that others would not experience a similar trauma and sense of worthlessness as his own family did in the mid-1970s.

“Compensation is the wrong word and that just sparks division among our communities,” he said.

“We have not sought compensation, you cannot compensate my family, my dad’s already passed away. He was a dawn raider who came here and contributed towards this country, paid tax all his life and never got into trouble with the law, he came here illegal but he wasn’t a criminal – he came here to seek a better life.”

The Minister for Pacific Peoples, ‘Aupito William Sio, revealed his own family was subjected to a dawn raid, describing the helplessness felt at the time by his father and the screams of terror of family members.

‘A bang in the early hours’
“We had just bought a house a year or two before and my parents were quite proud owners, putting roots into New Zealand and then to receive a bang in the early hours of the morning,” he told Morning Report.

“We were all awakened because of the noise, there was a man standing there with a flash light in my father’s eye, my mother clutching him so he doesn’t do anything that might hurt the police because it was his home. He felt there was a great deal of disrespect shown… to be treated like that – we were treated like animals.”

He said the apology would help raise up a mirror to New Zealand society and show how racism had inflicted hurt and trauma on a people who had simply responded to the call to fill labour gaps and wanted to live dignified lives.

Talking openly about the raids after an acknowledgement of injustice by government would hopefully help young Pacific people see their place in society as one hard fought and of value.

“I hope that it would empower them. I hope it gives them a sense of confidence that they are valued as human beings, that their heritage as peoples of the Pacific is something to be held tightly and to be treasured and I hope that this gives them a better understanding of what their grandparents and parents have endured and the sacrifices that were made, ‘Aupito said.

“That they stand on the shoulders of those giants and that they should be proud, not ashamed and recognise Pacific peoples have continued to provide a strong and positive contribution to the fabric of Aotearoa.”

He said Ardern and her cabinet would make decisions regarding what practical actions should accompany the apology.

Green call for residency
The Green Party’s spokesperson for Pacific people, Teanau Tuiono, echoed the calls for residency. He told RNZ Morning Report the government apology was significant and a start, but needed to be backed by substantive action, which should include educating people on the raids and offering legal pathways to contemporary overstayers.

“They came here for exactly the same reasons that our parents and our grandparents came here in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and the ’80s and the important thing also to remember here is that they are also essential workers and they have helped carry us through the pandemic,” he said.

“For me it’s really important to see what has happened in the past in particular in the damn raids within the wider trajectory of history of Pacific peoples within Aotearoa.”

National leader Judith Collins also backed the government apology. She told RNZ Morning Report that it was a sad time in New Zealand history and that anything beyond an apology was up to the prime minister.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The chair of the board of French Polynesia’s social security agency CPS has called on the French state to pay for the medical costs caused by its nuclear weapons tests.

Patrick Galenon, who is also a leading trade unionist, has written to the French Overseas Minister Sebastien Lecornu as France plans a high-level roundtable in Paris next month on the legacy of the nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific.

Galenon said that since 1995 the CPS had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from any of the 23 cancers recognised by law as being the result of radiation.

He said France needed to reimburse these expenses if it wanted to restore trust.

A 2010 French law recognised for the first time that the nuclear tests were not clean but compensation to successful claimants was only made on the basis of national solidarity, not because the French state recognised any liability.

Galenon said France’s liability had to be anchored in law as the rest was just sentimentality and politics.

He said France should also assume paying for ongoing oncology services, which cost the CPS more than US$50 million a year.

Between 1966 and 1996, France carried out 193 nuclear weapons tests in French Polynesia.

The test sites of Moruroa and Fangataufa remain excised from French Polynesia and are French no-go zones.

• More than 2000 nuclear tests have been conducted since the first American test, Trinity, in 1945, according to the Swedish Physicians against Nuclear Weapons. More than 500 tests have been done in the atmosphere, under water or in space. The rest have been tested underground.The US is responsible for around 1000 of these tests, the Soviet Union conducted about 700, France 210 (including 17 in Algeria), China 35 and the UK about 30 tests. India has conducted six tests, Pakistan five and North Korea one nuclear test.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

The French nuclear compensation commission, CIVEN, says it will soon report on how to respond to last month’s Supreme Court reinstatement of some compensation claims from French Polynesia.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz