French Polynesia’s anti-nuclear organisation Association 193 has criticised the latest French report about the impact of the France’s nuclear weapons tests.

France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research evaluated additional declassified data from the tests at Moruroa Atoll and found that radiation from them had a “minimal” role in causing thyroid cancer.

The association’s president, Father Auguste Uebe-Carlson, told the AFP news agency there was a tendency by the French state and the institute to minimise the impact of the nuclear fallout.

He said the French Committee for the Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Tests refused to recognise the files of victims born after 1974, when the military carried out its last atmospheric test.

But Father Uebe-Carlson said there was an argument to also recognise cancer sufferers born since then.

According to Father Uebe-Carlson, the institute would one day have to explain why there were so many cancers in French Polynesia.

He has repeatedly accused France of refusing to recognise the impact of the tests, instead using “propaganda” to say they were clean or a “thing of the past”.

He said health problems were now being attributed to poor diet and lifestyle choices.

He said that three years ago he had carried out a survey in Mangareva, which is close to the former weapons test sites, and found that from 1966 onward all families reported cases of still-born babies.

Call for release of scientific data
The president of the test veterans’ organisation Moruroa e Tatou said the release of the scientific data was not enough.

Hiro Tefaarere told Polynésie 1ère TV that it was “absolutely necessary” for his organisation to get from the French state the register of the cancer patients and cancer deaths during the testing period.

He said it was “imperative” that these files be given to Moruroa e Tatou.

Tefaarere said this research, if the state agreed to release it, would give his organisation the essential elements to consolidate the complaints which have been filed

A Territorial Assembly member, Hinamoeura Cross, who suffers from leukemia, said she was outraged that reports were still being published that were downplaying the tests’ effects.

The new Tahitian president, Moetai Brotherson, said he would take the latest report into account when he entered into discussions with the French government.

French Polynesia had for years been trying to get France to reimburse it for the costs of cancer sufferers.

$1bn to treat radiation cancers
Its social security agency, CPS, said that since 1995 it had spent almost US$1 billion to treat 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation from the tests.

In 2010, Paris recognised for the first time that the tests had had an impact on the environment and health, paving the way for compensation.

Between 1966 and 1996, France carried out almost 200 tests in the South Pacific, involving more than 100,000 military and civilian personnel.

Paris has refused to apologise for the tests, but President Emmanuel Macron said France owed “a debt” to the French Polynesian people.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The office of the Tahitian president says it wants to honour the memory of Bruno Barrillot who was the head of French Polynesia’s organisation looking at the aftermath of France’s nuclear weapons tests.

The office says it wants to mark the sixth anniversary of Barrillot’s return from France to French Polynesia.

He died less than a year later, shortly before his 77th birthday.

In 2013, Barrillot was sacked by the newly-elected government led by Gaston Flosse, which objected to funding his agency.

His dismissal was widely condemned because he was considered to be the most knowledgeable person about the French tests.

The test veterans’ organisation Moruroa e Tatou said he was pursued by a “vengeful hatred” that did no justice to the government.

Military sites Moruroa, Hao
In 2016, the government reinstated him — three years after the Flosse sacking.

Barrillot’s duties included work on the rehabilitation of the former test-related military sites on Moruroa and Hao as well as assisting in efforts to amend the French nuclear testing compensation law.

In 1984, Barrillot, a French-born priest, founded the NGO Arms Observatory and after the French sinking of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in July 1985 he focused on the damage caused by the nuclear tests in the Pacific.

He was also the co-founder of French Polynesia’s nuclear test veteran organisations.

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

Several thousand people in French Polynesia have joined a march demanding France own up to the damage caused by its nuclear weapons tests.

The rally yesterday was organised by nuclear veterans group and the pro-independence opposition to mark the day in 1974 when fallout from the Centaur atmospheric nuclear test covered all of French Polynesia.

The protest under the banner Mā’ohi Lives Matter came a week before French President Emmanuel Macron is due for his delayed first official visit to the territory.

A pro-independence parliamentarian, Moetai Brotherson, said that over the years the French tests had contributed to the death of thousands of people yet France refused to apologise for that.

France has ruled out an apology and its government told a roundtable on the nuclear legacy in Paris earlier this month that it never told lies about the testing programme.

The pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said France had denied the reality for decades, adding that he fought against France’s lies which he likened to terrorism.

In 2018, Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party and the dominant Māohi Protestant Church alleged that the weapons testing amounted to a crime against humanity and referred all living French presidents to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Fifteen days after Tahiti Nui’s anti-nuclear protest on July 2, the Tavini Huiraatira party has organised a march Mā’ohi Lives Matter this weekend with support from the Mā’ohi Protestant Church, Association 193 and Moruroa e Tatou.

Former territorial president of Tahiti and pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru has called for an “unprecedented mobilisation” of the population.

It was after the unrest caused by the publication of the book Toxic (Toxique) last March that the anti-nuclear protest was set for July 17.

The event on Saturday (Tahiti time) is also being mirrored in Auckland at AUT University on Sunday in a Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally being organised by Les Tahitiens de NZ.

The date was chosen to mark the controversial French atmospheric nuclear test Centaur on 17 July 1974.

This was a failed test, complicated by a dreadful weather forecast, that would have blown the radioactive cloud across French Polynesia to the main island of Tahiti Nui.

According to estimates given by the journalist authors of the book Toxic, this would have exposed up to 110,000 Polynesians to radioactive fallout.

Famous JFK speech
In the days running up to the protest, it is by the historic words extracted from the famous John Fitzgerald Kennedy speech that Oscar Temaru wanted to attract popular support: “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

“It is a call for a general mobilisation,” Temaru explained.

“I can’t tell how many we will be. But I can tell you that there will be thousands of people.”

And Temaru, leader of the Tavini, added: “I will be satisfied only if we have 50,000 people.”

The bar is set very high.

Fifteen days after the July 2 march that marked this year’s 55th anniversary of the first nuclear test, and a week before the official visit of President Emmanuel Macron to French Polynesia, the collective called Fait Nucléaire en Polynésie (Nuclear Fact in French Polynesia) wanted to strike hard.

At the beginning of the month, the Moruroa e Tatou association managed to gather between 2000 to 3000 protesters in Pape’ete, thanks largely to the support of the l’Église Protestante Mā’ohi (Mā’ohi Protestant Church), which provided most of the protesters.

If its representatives were not at the press conference given last Tuesday at the Tavini headquarters to promote the protest of July 17, the religious organisation is still part of the organising collective.

Richard Tuheiava tried to explain the absence of the church leaders by asking the press: “You seem to doubt the involvement of the Mā’ohi Protestant Church? Don’t worry…”

Grievances and complaints
Two points of gathering are planned for Saturday morning from 6am in Tahiti. One is the carpark of the former Mamao hospital, for protesters coming from the east coast, and the other, the Tipaerui sports stadium for those coming from the west coast.

The two marches for the protest called Mā’ohi Lives Matter will start walking at 9am toward the main place of Tarahoi which will be the focal point for the event.

There a speech is planned to remind the objective of the protest. At midday after one minute silence in homage to the sick and former Polynesian veterans who died due to the nuclear tests, a section will be dedicated to a statement by victims who survived.

Video recordings made for this occasion will be shown on a big screen to carry the message of the sick Polynesians and international sympathisers who could not physically make it to the protest.

Among them will be Hilda Lini, sister of the late Walter Lini, the father of independence of Vanuatu.

Some diplomats from the Pacific are also on the card, recognised by the United Nations along with representatives of non-government organisations which sit at the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

“Partners from well-known Pacific institutions, partners of the UN and active individuals in the Pacific region who know the fight of the Tavini on the nuclear issues,” added Michel Villar, foreign affairs councillor for the pro-independence party.

Crime against humanity lawsuit
The other main issue for this protest on Saturday –- and not the least –- is tied to the lawsuit alleging a crime against humanity pressed by independent Polynesians before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, an action that has now stalled.

Since last March, anti-nuclear activists have set up a network of recommendations for those recognised as victims and compensated to file a complaint in The Hague over the shortcomings of the the so-called Morin Law and community meetings have since been organised.

These complaints are likely to reinforce the statement made by Oscar Temaru before the ICJ in October 2018, as explained by Michel Villar last March.

“People have been trained to take statements. It’s already running full speed,” said Temaru.

“I am very satisfied with the last meetings that we have had.”

On Saturday, a host of complaints would help the pro-independence and anti-nuclear causes.

At least to boost communication of their story of suffering on the international stage.

• France conducted 193 nuclear tests from 1966 to 1996 at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia, including 41 atmospheric tests until 1974 that exposed the local population, site workers and French soldiers to high levels of radiation.

Translated for Asia Pacific Report by Ena Manuireva, one of the organisers of the Mai te Paura Ātōmī i te Tiāmara’a (From Bomb contamination to self determination) rally at WF603, Auckland University of Technology at 12noon on Sunday, July 18.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On 27 May 2021, a significant event took place in Rwanda where French President Emmanuel Macron asked for forgiveness from the people of Rwanda after admitting for the first time that France bore a “terrible responsibility” for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the 1994 genocide.

This is how President Macron’s wording appeared in The Guardian:

“France played its part and bears the political responsibility for the events in Rwanda. France is obligated to face history and admit that it caused suffering to the Rwandan people by allowing itself lengthy silences at the truth exam …”

On the other hand, the French government assumes no liability for the genocide and ecocide perpetrated in Mā’ohi Nui (French Polynesia)- the “crown jewel” of France’s overseas territories.

The French administration is living in denial concerning its responsibility to the Ma’ohi Nui people vis-a-vis the impact of nuclear tests in the region.

Former French President Hollande said in 2016 that: “I recognise that the nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996 in French Polynesia have had an environmental impact, causing health consequences.”

Further, Hollande added that the issue of compensation for health consequences would be examined — but that statement fell flat as a series of empty promises. That speech has no political or compensatory weight since every five years the reset button is activated during the French presidential elections.

Promises turn stale
Promises made by politicians usually turn stale unless they are seeking another electoral mandate.

France projects an image of itself as a responsible nation in the world at large — but France has treated the issues concerning Rwanda and Ma’ohi Nui differently.

The Rwanda population received a confession of guilt whereas the Ma’ohi Nui populations have received a slap in the face.

Mā’ohi Nui is still waiting an admission of guilt from the French administration — especially after the publication of the investigative book Toxic that discredited all the French governments’ discourse concerning “safe and clean” nuclear tests.

The French government refuses to tell the truth concerning the harm successive administrations have committed upon Ma’ohi Nui.

Ma’ohi Nui standing up in protest
The release of the book Toxic has injected a renewed energy among civil and political groups in Mā’ohi Nui who are reminding the French state that discussions concerning accountability are long overdue. The book focused on the degree to which the radioactive fallout from an atmospheric nuclear test named Centaur contaminated nearly the entirety of the Mā’ohi Nui Islands.

France has used the local Ma’ohi Nui population as guinea pigs to advance its national ambition of becoming a nuclear power while ignoring the rights of the local population and their environment.

Marches in commemoration of the more than 100,000 Ma’ohi Nui people affected by the radioactive cloud from the Centaur explosion will take place in the streets of Pape’ete in Tahiti, on July 17 — the very date when Centaur exploded in 1974.

Marches in Pape’ete are also a response to the stand taken by French President Macron. The French leader has organised a meeting this week when, once more, discussions concerning the modality of potential compensation are taking place along with new rules to be drafted for victims of radioactivity.

However, instead of holding the meeting in Mā’ohi Nui, where most of the contamination has occurred, the meeting is being held in the colonial capital of Paris. Locating the meeting in Paris appears to be yet another way for the French administration to try to control the narrative surrounding the Centaur blast.

Faa’a mayor Oscar Temaru, a former French Polynedsia territorial president, is under no illusion that most of the participants attending the Paris meeting will be pro-French, including Tahiti’s current government which has responded positively to the invitation.

The main anti-nuclear Mā’ohi parties have rejected the invitation from Paris for France’s lack of transparency concerning process, and because these parties believe France’s capital is an inappropriate venue for discussing the horrendous nuclear tests that took place in Mā’ohi Nui.

Total transparency
Temaru says that the way to demonstrate total transparency would be to call upon a neutral arbitrator such as the United Nations to mediate between the French government and Mā’ohi Nui representatives.

Temaru asks for this despite knowing well that the French practise a policy of the “empty chair” at the UN. The International Court of Justice in the Hague would be another appropriate place to discuss decolonisation: especially since Macron said in 2017 that colonisation was a crime against humanity.

According to Temaru, pro-French representatives of the local Tahitian government are trying to undermine the resolution of 2013 that reinscribed French Polynesia onto the UN list of non-self-governing territories. These Tahitian representatives are asking for the 2013 resolution to be overturned: that is very unlikely to happen.

In consequence, Oscar Temaru and his people are organising a day of action for July 17 in Pape’ete, Tahiti. They will march in commemoration of the day the 1974 Centaur nuclear test was initiated — for reparation for damage caused to the Ma’ohi Nui environment and people as a result of nuclear testing, and for the decolonisation of Ma’ohi Nui.

Temaru has invited Moana peoples to stand beside him in solidarity. Nuclear capability is the colonial weapon par excellence and this issue cannot be separated from indigenous peoples’ rights to self-determination.

Organisers in Aotearoa have responded to Temaru’s call and have organised a rally to take place in Auckland on July 18 at the same time as protests occur in Tahiti.

Organising the diaspora around Ma’ohi Nui protest
Members of the Tahitian community living in Auckland will add their voices and feet to support their countrymen/women in Tahiti and rally in a show of solidarity. This rally acknowledges that Ma’ohi Nui communities have fought for redress from France over the nuclear issue for long decades.

Rally organisers seek the active support of communities and civil society groups committed to the rights of the Ma’ohi Nui people in their fight against colonialism and neo-colonialism. The Auckland gathering recognises the suffering of other smaller communities in the Pacific in the face of ecological and political colonialism.

The action for Ma’ohi Nui in Auckland will be a cross-generational endeavour aiming to bring together young activists with more experienced ones-so that the new generation can work alongside those who have gone before.

Organisers recognise they stand upon the shoulders of Māori, Pacific, and Pakeha giants who have fought for nuclear justice for Moana peoples in years gone by. The consequences of nuclear testing in the Pacific are intergenerational.

This rally seeks to bring together all the Pacific people (and all other supporters) who live by the Moana-Nui-a-Hiva. Nuclear testing, climate change, and deep-sea mining all imperil our ocean. We must respond to these threats collectively as peoples of the “Sea of Islands”.

The Ma’ohi Nui peoples’ struggle for their rights concerning nuclear issues is an Oceanic issue.

The rally will send a strong message to the French administration that people will not rest until there are concrete efforts made by the French colonial power in Mā’ohi Nui to:

• Recognise responsibility for the 30 years of nuclear testing
• Compensate the whole of Mā’ohi Nui who have carried the sanitary cost of contamination
• Repatriate the unstable nuclear waste buried under the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa
• Clean up both atolls
• Start the process of de-colonisation as stated in the 2013 resolution of the UN Charter

Auckland rally plans
The Auckland rally for Mā’ohi Nui has two components. Firstly, we will gather in the “Elizabeth Yates” room at the Ellen Melville Centre to watch live video of the Tahitian day of action in Pape’ete. Oscar Temaru will address his people in Tahiti and those gathered in Auckland.

Secondly, we will go to nearby Bernard Freyberg Square where there will be poems, songs, and speeches given in honour of Mā’ohi Nui and her struggle for reparations and decolonisation.

In this work, organisers are guided by the wisdom of assassinated Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou:

“The Pacific, with its ocean and its islands, is a gift of the gods to the peoples of Oceania, past and present. The ocean, the islands, the air and the light, the fish, the birds, the plants and mankind together comprise the Life which is our supreme heritage as Pacific people. Everyone is responsible for his own fulfilment.”

“This responsibility is becoming more and more difficult to exercise as the dangers assume ever greater dimensions:

• The danger of denial of the indigenous peoples and their heritage;
• The danger of denial of the greatest dignity of all: control of one’s
life and destiny;
• The danger of blind industrialisation smothering the earth with
tar and concrete;
• The danger of tentacular multinationals which suck the substance;
of our countries to nourish other bellies and other minds…; and
• the danger of nuclear weapons.”

Ena Manuireva is a Mangarevian originally from the south of “French” Polynesia who has lived in New Zealand for many years and is currently a doctoral studies candidate in Te Ara Poutama at Auckland University of Technology. According to family genealogies, Tony Fala has ancestors from multiple Moana islands including Aotearoa, Samoa, Tokelau, and Tonga. He is an activist, volunteer community worker, and volunteer project researcher and writer completing a small Moana academic, activist, and community education project. Both Manuireva and Fala contribute articles for Asia Pacific Report. They are organising the Auckland solidarity rally.

Speakers TBA:
Rally programme TBA.
Rally on Facebook Events page, Mai te Paura Atomi, i te Tiamara’a/ From Bomb Contamination to self- determination.

Organisers:
Ena Manuireva (Ma’ohi Nui lead organiser). Email: jmanuireva@gmail.com Cellphone: 02102575958
Tony Fala (support organiser). Email: tony_fala@yahoo.com Cellphone: 0220129381

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

While a Paris roundtable about the legacy of nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks. Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Walter Zweifel reports.

A high-level roundtable on France’s nuclear legacy in French Polynesia is being held in Paris this week, aimed at “turning the page” on the aftermath of the weapons tests.

Between 1966 to 1996, France carried out 193 tests in the South Pacific, yet 25 years later there are still outstanding claims for compensation and the test sites remain no-go zones monitored by France.

The two-day Paris meeting was called by the French president Emmanuel Macron in April shortly after a new study about a 1974 atmospheric weapons test caused another wave of outcry.

Analysing declassified French documents, the study Toxique by the news website Disclose concluded that the fallout affected the entire population and not only the immediate testing zone around Moruroa as the public had been led to believe.

Macron’s initiative to put the recent history on the table has been welcomed by French Polynesia’s president Edouard Fritch, but has been dismissed by the opposition, nuclear veteran groups and the dominant Maohi Protestant Church, which will stay away, saying the delegation from Tahiti lacks credibility and legitimacy.

For Fritch, the problems thrown up by the nuclear test era have been discussed with French politicians for the past 25 years but he says it is Macron who at last wants to deal with this “pebble in the shoe” in the relationship with Tahiti.

This harks back to Macron’s 2017 presidential election campaign when his team promised Tahitians that Paris would assume key responsibility for health care and to pay in full for the medical costs incurred by those suffering from radiation-induced illnesses.

Tests’ impact on health, environment
Fritch told media that the upcoming talks should bring ‘truth and justice’, with an agenda looking at the tests’ impact on health and the environment, and the financial costs.

The Tahitian delegation also wants France to acknowledge its nuclear legacy in the constitution.

Fritch said he would “ask the President of the Republic to give us a precise timetable and above all to send us competent people in the matters that will be discussed”.

Accompanying Fritch is a representative of the Territorial Assembly and the territory’s members of the French legislature, such as Lana Tetuanui, as well as employer and union delegates.

Among the French participants will be the health minister but the defence minister is not certain to attend.

French Polynesia’s former president Gaston Flosse, who for decades defended France’s testing regime, was not invited.

Reflecting the simmering dissonance in Tahiti, the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party of Oscar Temaru rejected the invitation to Paris outright, labelling the planned talks a sham.

Temaru said any such talks should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, but rather in New York under the auspices of the United Nations.

While France refuses to acknowledge the 2013 UN decision to reinscribe French Polynesia on the decolonisation list, Temaru insists that “the right of peoples to self-determination is a sacred right, and there is no mixing the sacred and the vile, that is money. Our people are not for sale, Mā’ohi Nui is not for sale.”

The main nuclear test veterans organisation, Moruroa e tatou, decided to boycott the talks.

Its leader Hiro Tefaarere said that after 50 years of people suffering from the test legacy, those going to Paris put money at the forefront of their demands and not ethics.

He said Fritch would not have joined the roundtable had not it been for the release of Toxique which identified the French state’s “secrecy, lies and negligence”.

‘Crime against humanity’
Rejecting the French invitation, the Māohi Protestant Church, which is the main denomination in Tahiti, has in turn invited Macron to attend its synod when he is expected to visit Tahiti in the next few weeks.

The head of the church, Francois Pihaatae, said that by going to Paris, they would have the “wool pulled over their eyes”, but once Macron was in Tahiti the presence of the local people would create a counterweight.

The church has been critical of the French state, saying it proceeded with the tests in full knowledge of the impact of nuclear testing since before 1963.

Both the church and Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party alleged that this amounted to a crime against humanity.

Three years ago, they announced that they had taken their case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), but it is not known if the court has accepted jurisdiction for their complaint.

Paris roundly rejected the claims, condemning what it called the misuse of the court’s international jurisdiction for local political purposes.

The French High Commissioner Rene Bidal said at the time the definition of a crime against humanity centred on the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War and referred to killings, exterminations, and deportations.

Soon after making his charge, Temaru was forced out of office over an election campaign irregularity, which his Tavini Huiraatira party said was orchestrated by France to “politically assassinate” him in retribution for the ICC case.

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.

Over a decade, it proved to be a source of frustration because most claimants, who suffered from any of the 23 recognised types of cancer, failed with their applications.

This prompted a loosening of the eligibility criteria and then again a tightening, leaving it still open for further amendments.

French Polynesia’s social security agency CPS has repeatedly called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

It 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.

Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

Risks around Moruroa
The question of the tests’ lasting intergenerational effects remains unanswered.

In 2018, a study was planned after the former head of child psychiatry in Tahiti, Dr Christian Sueur, reported pervasive developmental disorders in zones close to the Moruroa weapons test site.

The findings — reported in the Le Parisien newspaper — caused an uproar in Tahiti and Fritch accused Dr Sueur of causing panic.

The psychiatrist had reported that a quarter of children he treated for pervasive developmental disorders had intellectual disabilities or deformities which he attributed to genetic mutations.

However, three years on a study by a geneticist is yet to be commissioned.

Calls for a clean-up of the Moruroa test site continue.

Although France stopped its weapons tests in 1996, it has refused to return the excised atoll to French Polynesia and declared it a no-go zone.

The Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, who is also a member of the French National Assembly, said France might lack either the technology or the financial means to remove radioactive sediments.

He also said the cracks on Moruroa were a concern which might explain why France’s biggest investment in the region is the US$100 million Telsite monitoring system against a possible tsunami.

There are fears the atoll could collapse as result of the more than 140 underground nuclear blasts.

Plans for a memorial to be built in Pape’ete have had lacklustre support from those who keep mistrusting France.

While the roundtable is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks.

Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A sit-in has been held outside the French High Commission in French Polynesia to commemorate the 54th anniversary of the first nuclear weapons test at Moruroa.

The demonstration was organised by the anti-nuclear group Association 193 which again decried the recent law change tightening compensation criteria for those suffering ill-health.

The group said most compensation claims for radiation induced diseases kept being rejected.

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The largest denomination, the Maohi Protestant Church, as well as the Moruroa e tatou veterans group held a conference on the tests’ aftermath, discussing action against the French state.

They argued that victims should seek redress through international courts, with a case pending in the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

The case was lodged in 2018 by the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party which accused France’s living presidents of crimes against humanity for exposing French Polynesia to nuclear fallout.

Until 10 years ago, France said its tests were clean and caused no harm.

The first of 193 tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls was carried out on 2 July 1966 and the last in 1996.

The tests left a toxic radioactive legacy that continues to cause immense harm to the health and wellbeing of Tahitians and other Pacific peoples, and threatens the future of the Pacific ocean.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz