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

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