Pacific civil society groups say 2025 has been a big year for the ocean.

Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) representative Maureen Penjueli said the Pacific Ocean was being hyper-militarised and there was a desire for seabed minerals to be used to build-up military capacity.

“Critical minerals, whether from land or from the deep ocean itself, have a military end use, and that’s been made very clear in 2025,” Penjueli said during the Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) 2025 State of the Ocean webinar.

“They’re deemed extremely vital for defence industrial base, enabling the production of military platforms such as fighter aircraft, tanks, missiles, submarines.

“2025 is the year where we see the link between critical minerals on the sea floor and use [in the] military.”

PANG’s Joey Tau said one of the developments had been the increase in countries calling for a moratorium or pause on deep sea mining, which was now up to 40.

“Eight of which are from the Pacific and a sub-regional grouping the MSG (Melanesian Spearhead Group) still holds that political space or that movement around a moratorium.”

Deep-sea mining rules
Tau said it came as the UN-sanctioned International Seabed Authority tried to come to an agreement on deep-sea mining rules at the same time as the United States is considering its own legal pathway.

“It is a bad precedent setting by the US, we hope that the ISA both assembly and the council would hold ground and warn the US.”

He said unlike US, China spoke about the importance of multilateralism and it for global partners to maintain unity within the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) agreement which has not been ratified by the United States.

Also in February was the deep sea minerals talanoa, where Pacific leaders met to discuss deep sea mining.

“Some of our countries sit on different sides of the table on this issue. You have countries who are sponsoring and who are progressing the agenda of deep-sea mining, not only within their national jurisdiction, but also in the international arena,” Tau said.

In May, UN human rights experts expressed concern about the release of treated nuclear wastewater.

Japan’s government has consistently maintained the release meets international safety standards, and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency shows there is no measurable impact beyond Japan’s coastal waters.

Legal and moral problem
However, Ocean Vision Legal’s Naima Taafaki-Fifita said as well as being an environmental issue, it was also a legal and moral problem.

“By discharging these radioactive contaminants into the Pacific, Japan risks breaching its obligations under international law,” she said.

“[The UN special rapporteurs] caution that this may pose grave risks to human rights, particularly the rights to life, health, food and culture, not only in Japan, but across the Pacific.”

Taafaki-Fifita said it was a “deeply personal” issue for Pacific people who lived with the nuclear legacy of testing.

In September, what is known as the “High Seas Treaty” received its 60th ratification which means it will now be legally effective in January 2026.

The agreement allows international waters — which make up nearly two-thirds of the ocean — to be placed into marine protected areas.

Taafaki-Fitita said it was important that Pacific priorities were visible and heard as the treaty became implemented.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Marshall Islands marked 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tests ever conducted were unleashed over the weekend.

The Micronesian nation experienced 67 known atmospheric nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, resulting in an ongoing legacy of death, illness, and contamination.

The country’s President Hilda Heine says her people continue to face the impacts of US nuclear weapons testing seven decades after the last bomb was detonated.

The Pacific Islands have a complex history of nuclear weapons testing, but the impacts are very much a present-day challenge, Heine said at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Tonga last year.

She said that the consequences of nuclear weapons testing “in our own home” are “expensive” and “cross-cutting”.

“When I was just a young girl, our islands were turned into a big laboratory to test the capabilities of weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare agents, and unexploded ordinance,” she said.

“The impacts are not just historical facts, but contemporary challenges,” she added, noting that “the health consequences for the Marshallese people are severe and persistent through generations.”

“We are now working to reshape the narrative from that of being victims to one of active agencies in helping to shape our own future and that of the world around us,” she told Pacific leaders, where the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres was a special guest.

She said the displacement of communities from ancestral lands has resulted in grave cultural impacts, hindering traditional knowledge from being passed down to younger generations.

“As well as certain traditional practices, customs, ceremonies and even a navigational school once defining our very identity and become a distant memory, memorialised through chance and storytelling,” President Heine said.

“The environmental legacy is contamination and destruction: craters, radiation, toxic remnants, and a dome containing radioactive waste with a half-life of 24,000 years have rendered significant areas uninhabitable.

“Key ecosystems, once full of life and providing sustenance to our people, are now compromised.”

Heine said cancer and thyroid diseases were among a list of presumed radiation-induced medical conditions that were particularly prevalent in the Marshallese community.

Displacement, loss of land, and psychological trauma were also contributing factors to high rates of non-communicable diseases, she said.

“Despite these immense challenges, the Marshallese people have shown remarkable resilience and strength. Our journey has been one of survival, advocacy, and an unyielding pursuit of justice.

“We have fought tirelessly to have our voices heard on the international stage, seeking recognition.”

In 2017, the Marshall Islands government created the National Nuclear Commission to coordinate efforts to address testing impacts.

“We are a unique and important moral compass in the global movement for nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation,” Heine said.

The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration Kurt Cambell said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damage and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.

“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he said.

“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment,” he told reporters in Nuku’alofa.

A shared nuclear legacy
The National Nuclear Commission chairperson Ariana Tibon-Kilma, a direct descendant of survivors of the nuclear weapons testing programme Project 4.1 — which was the top-secret medical lab study on the effects of radiation on human bodies — told RNZ Pacific that what occured in Marshall Islands should not happen to any country.

“This programme was conducted without consent from any of the Marshallese people,” she said.

“For a number of years, they were studied and monitored, and sometimes even flown out to the US and displayed as a showcase.

“The history and trauma associated with what happened to my family, as well as many other families in the Marshall Islands, was barely spoken of.

“What happened to the Marshallese people is something that we would not wish upon any other Pacific island country or any other person in humanity.”

She said the nuclear legacy was a shared one.

“We all share one Pacific Ocean and what happened to the Marshall Islands, I am, sure resonates throughout the Pacific,” Tibon-Kilma said.

“I think compensation for survivors is key,” she said.

“It is part of a transitional justice approach. I can’t really speak to the breadth and the depth of the compensation that would need to be provided, but it is certainly an ongoing issue for discussion.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In the year marking 40 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents and 71 years since the most powerful nuclear weapons tested by the United States, Greenpeace is calling on Washington to comply with demands by the Marshall Islands for nuclear justice.

“The Marshall Islands bears the deepest scars of a dark legacy — nuclear contamination, forced displacement, and premeditated human experimentation at the hands of the US government,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Shiva Gounden.

To mark the Marshall Islands’ Remembrance Day today, the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior is flying the republic’s flag at halfmast in solidarity with those who lost their lives and are suffering ongoing trauma as a result of US nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific.

On 1 March 1954, the Castle Bravo nuclear bomb was detonated on Bikini Atoll with a blast 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

On Rongelap Atoll, 150 km away, radioactive fallout rained onto the inhabited island, with children mistaking it as snow.

The Rainbow Warrior is sailing to the Marshall Islands where a mission led by Greenpeace will conduct independent scientific research across the country, the results of which will eventually be given to the National Nuclear Commission to support the Marshall Islands government’s ongoing legal proceedings with the US and at the UN.

The voyage also marks 40 years since Greenpeace’s original Rainbow Warrior evacuated the people of Rongelap after toxic nuclear fallout rendered their ancestral land uninhabitable.

Still enduring fallout
Marshall Islands communities still endure the physical, economic, and cultural fallout of the nuclear tests — compensation from the US has fallen far short of expectations of the islanders who are yet to receive an apology.

And the accelerating impacts of the climate crisis threaten further displacement of communities.

Former Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony deBrum’s “nuclear justice” speech as Right Livelihood Award Winner in 2009. Video: Voices Rising

“To this day, Marshall Islanders continue to grapple with this injustice while standing on the frontlines of the climate crisis — facing yet another wave of displacement and devastation for a catastrophe they did not create,” Gounden said.

“But the Marshallese people and their government are not just survivors — they are warriors for justice, among the most powerful voices demanding bold action, accountability, and reparations on the global stage.

“Those who have inflicted unimaginable harm on the Marshallese must be held to account and made to pay for the devastation they caused.

“Greenpeace stands unwaveringly beside Marshallese communities in their fight for justice. Jimwe im Maron.”

Ariana Tibon Kilma, chair of the Marshall Islands National Nuclear Commission, said that the immediate effects of the Bravo bomb on March 1 were “harrowing”.

“Hours after exposure, many people fell ill — skin peeling off, burning sensation in their eyes, their stomachs were churning in pain. Mothers watched as their children’s hair fell to the ground and blisters devoured their bodies overnight,” she said.

“Without their consent, the United States government enrolled them as ‘test subjects’ in a top secret medical study on the effects of radiation on human beings — a study that continued for 40 years.

“Today on Remembrance Day the trauma of Bravo continues for the remaining survivors and their descendents — this is a legacy not only of suffering, loss, and frustration, but also of strength, unity, and unwavering commitment to justice, truth and accountability.”

The new Rainbow Warrior will arrive in the Marshall Islands early this month.

Alongside the government of the Marshall Islands, Greenpeace will lead an independent scientific mission into the ongoing impacts of the US weapons testing programme.

Travelling across the country, Greenpeace will reaffirm its solidarity with the Marshallese people — now facing further harm and displacement from the climate crisis, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining in the Pacific.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The US tested 67 nuclear weapons on the Marshall Islands, tricking the people who lived on Bikini Atoll to leave their homeland “for the good of all mankind.”

But the Bikini Islanders didn’t know the US would contaminate their island and make it uninhabitable.

Now nearly 70 years later, many Marshall Islanders have moved to Springdale, Arkansas, nearly 600 miles (965 km) from the nearest ocean.

But as many Marshall Islanders build new lives there, they know Arkansas is not their permanent home, and their nuclear legacy is something both Americans and the next generation of Marshall Islanders need to remember.

The US forced the 167 islanders living on Bikini Atoll to leave in 1946 to enable American testing of nuclear weapons.

Over the next decade, the US tested 67 nuclear devices — 23 of them on Bikini.

Tabish Talib traveled to the Ozarks to learn how the Marshall Islanders are staying connected to their roots so far from their home.

“I feel like a nomad,” says a sixth generation representative of the Bikini Islanders in Arkansas, Sosylina Jibas-Maddison. “And it’s heartbreaking knowing there that we don’t have a home to go to.”

This is known to Marshall islanders as Bikini Day on July 5, the day that is also marked for the inaugural design of the swimsuit named by its French designer after the nuclear “bombshell”.

The AJ+ Reports documentary on the Marshall Islands in the US.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On the 61st anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence — 1 December 1961 — the Morning Star flag:

We, the Indigenous caucus of the movement for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice, and demilitarisation of the Pacific, call for coordinated action for key campaigns that impact the human rights, sovereignty, wellbeing and prosperity of Pacific peoples across our region.

As guardians of our Wansolwara (Tok Pisin term meaning “One Salt Water,” or “One Ocean, One People”), we are united in seeking the protection, genuine security and vitality for the spiritual, cultural and economic base for our lives, and we will defend it at all costs. We affirm the kōrero of the late Father Walter Lini, “No one is free, until everyone is free!”

We thank the mana whenua of Ōtepoti, Te Ao o Rongomaraeroa, the National Centre for Peace and Conflict and Kā Rakahau o Te Ao Tūroa Centre for Sustainability at the University of Otago for their hospitality in welcoming us as their Pacific whānau to their unceded and sovereign lands of Aotearoa.

We acknowledge the genealogy of resistance we share with community activists who laid the mat in our shared struggles in the 1970s and 1980s. Our gathering comes 40 years after the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa, hosted by the Pacific Peoples Anti Nuclear Action Committee (PPANAC) at Tātai Hono in Tamaki Makaurau.

Self-determination and decolonisation
We remain steadfast in our continuing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in West Papua, who are surviving from and resisting against the Indonesian genocidal regime, injustice and oppression. We bear witness for millions of West Papuans murdered by this brutal occupation. We will not be silent until the right to self-determination of West Papua is fully achieved.

We urge our Forum leaders to follow through with Indonesia to finalise the visit from the UN Commissioner for Human Rights to West Papua, as agreed in the Leaders Communiqué 2019 resolution.

We are united in reaffirming the inalienable right of all Indigenous peoples to self-determination and demand the sovereignty of West Papua, Kanaky, Mā’ohi Nui, Bougainville, Hawai’i, Guåhan, the Northern Mariana Islands, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa, and First Nations of the lands now called Australia.

Of priority, we call on the French government to implement the United Nations self-governing protocols in Mā’ohi Nui and Kanaky. We urge France to comply with the resolution set forth on May 17th, 2013 which declared French Polynesia to be a non-self-governing territory, and the successive resolutions from 2013 to 2022. The “empty seat policy” that the administering power has been practising since 2013 and attempts to remove Mā’ohi Nui from the list of countries to be decolonised have to stop. We call on France to immediately resume its participation in the work of the C-24 and the 4th Commission of the United Nations.

Nuclear justice
We grieve for the survivors and victims who lost their lives to the nuclear violence caused by over 315 nuclear weapons detonated in Marshall Islands, Australia, Kiribati, Johnston Atoll and Mā’ohi Nui by the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France. The legacy and ongoing nuclear violence in our region is unfinished business and calls for recognition, reconciliation and reparations to be made by nuclear colonisers are long overdue.

We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia and France to deliver fair and just
compensation to Indigenous civilians, workers and servicemen for the health and environmental harms, including intergenerational trauma caused by nuclear testing programs (and subsequent illegal medical experiments in the Marshall Islands). The compensation schemes currently in place in all states constitute a grave political failure of these aforementioned nuclear testing states and serve to deceive the world that they are recognising their responsibility to address the nuclear legacy. We call for the United States, United Kingdom/Australia, and France to establish or otherwise significantly improve
accessible healthcare systems and develop and fund cancer facilities within the Marshall Islands, Kiribati/Australia and Mā’ohi Nui respectively, where alarming rates of cancers, birth defects and other related diseases continue to claim lives and cause socio-economic distress to those affected. The descendants of the thousands of dead and the thousands of sick are still waiting for real justice to be put in place with the supervision of the international community.

We demand that the French government take full responsibility for the racist genocidal health effects of nuclear testing on generations of Mā’ohi and provide full transparency, rapid assessment and urgent action for nuclear contamination risks. While the President of France boasts on the international stage of his major environmental and ecological transition projects, in the territory of Mā’ohi Nui, the French government’s instructions are to definitively “turn the page of nuclear history.” This is a white-washing and colonial gas-lighting attitude towards the citizens and now the mokopuna of Mā’ohi Nui. It is
imperative for France to produce the long-awaited report on the environmental, economic and sanitary consequences of its 193 nuclear tests conducted between 1966 and 1996.

We proclaim our commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and call all states of the Pacific region who have not done so to sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), namely Australia, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. We urge Pacific nations along with the world’s governments to contribute to the international trust fund for victims of nuclear weapons implemented by the TPNW. We urge Aotearoa/New Zealand and other states who have ratified the TPNW to follow through on their commitment to nuclear survivors, and to create a world free from the threat and harm of nuclear weapons through the universalisation of the TPNW. There can be no peace without justice.

We oppose the despicable proposal of Japan and the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) to dump 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive wastewater next year in 2023, and support in solidarity with the citizens of Japan, East Asian states and Micronesian states who sit on the frontlines of this crisis. This is an act of trans-boundary harm upon the Pacific. We call on the New Zealand government and others to stay true to its commitment to a Nuclear Free Pacific and bring a case under the international tribunal for the Law of the Sea against the proposed radioactive release from TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi planned from 2023 to 2053.

Demilitarisation
We condemn the geopolitical order forced upon our nations by imperial powers, who claim to be our friends, yet treat our islands as collateral damage and use financial blackmail to bully us into submission. We demand that the United States remove and remediate all military bases, infrastructure, debris and nuclear and chemical waste from the Pacific. Of priority is the US-owned nuclear waste storage site of Runit Dome on Enewetak Atoll which threatens nuclear contamination of the ocean and marine-life, on which our lives depend. Furthermore, we call for all remaining American UXOs (unexploded ordnances) from World War II in the Solomon Islands, which cause the preventable deaths of more than 20 people every year to be removed immediately!

We support in solidarity with Kānaka Maoli and demand the immediate end to the biennial RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) exercises hosted in Honolulu, Hawai’i. We urge all the present participating militaries of RIMPAC to withdraw their participation in the desecration and plunder of Indigenous lands and seas. We support in solidarity with the Marianas and demand an end to munitions testing in the Northern Marianas and the development of new military bases. We rebuke the AUKUS trilateral military pact and the militarisation of unceded Aboriginal lands of the northern arc of Australia and are outraged at Australia’s plans to permit further military bases, six nuclear-capable B52s and eight nuclear-powered submarines to use our Pacific Ocean as a military playground and nuclear highway.

We call on all those committed to ending militarism in the Pacific to gather and organise in Hawai’i between 6-16 June 2024, during the Festival of the Pacific and bring these issues to the forefront to renew our regional solidarity and form a new coalition to build power to oppose all forms of military exercises (RIMPAC also returns in July -August 2024) and instead promote the genuine security of clean water, safe housing, healthcare and generative economies, rather than those of extraction and perpetual readiness for war.

We view colonial powers and their militaries to be the biggest contributors to the climate crisis, the continued extractive mining of our lands and seabeds and the exploitation of our resources. These exacerbate and are exacerbated by unjust structures of colonialism, militarism and geopolitical abuse. This environmental destruction shifts the costs to Pacific and Indigenous communities who are responsible for less than 1 percent of global climate emissions.

As Pacific peoples deeply familiar with the destruction of nuclear imperialism, we strongly disapprove of the new propaganda of nuclear industry lobbyists, attempting to sell nuclear power as the best solution for climate change. Similarly, we oppose the Deep Sea Mining (DSM) industry lobbyists that promote DSM as necessary for green technologies. We call for a Fossil Fuel Non-proliferation Treaty to be implemented by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and for safe and equitable transition to better energy solutions. We reject any military solution for the climate crisis!

We recognise the urgent need for a regional coordinator to be instituted to strategise collective grassroots movements for self-determination, decolonisation, nuclear justice and demilitarisation.

Our existence is our resistance.

We, the guardians of our Wansolwara, are determined to carry on the legacy and vision for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific.

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

Greenpeace Aotearoa has condemned New Zealand for “standing by” while “deep wounds are inflicted on its Pacific neighbours” by silence over deep sea mining.

Greenpeace’s seabed mining campaigner James Hita made the critical statement today after a dramatic shift at the UN Oceans conference in Lisbon this week when several Pacific governments formed an alliance to oppose deep sea mining in international waters.

The environmental movement said the continued silence from the New Zealand government on the issue was “deafening”.

To standing ovations, Fiji and Samoa joined the alliance opposing deep sea mining announced by Palau on Monday.

The following day Tuvalu, Tonga, and Guam announced their support for a halt to deep sea mining and France is now also calling for a legal and robust framework to ban deep sea mining in the high seas.

But so far the New Zealand government has not taken a stance on the issue.

“New Zealand risks standing by while deep wounds are inflicted on its Pacific neighbours if it continues to stay silent on deep sea mining,” James Hita said.

‘Ruthless corporations’
“This move by ruthless corporations to begin deep sea mining in the Pacific is the latest example of colonisation in a region that has already suffered so much from nuclear testing, overfishing and resource extraction by the developed world.

“It’s a sad irony that when French nuclear testing threatened the Pacific, Norman Kirk’s Labour government sent a frigate in protest, but now, when corporate seabed mining threatens the Pacific, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour government does nothing while Macron’s French government speaks out to protect the Pacific.

“New Zealand has a golden opportunity right now to show real solidarity and leadership in the Pacific and we call on Prime Minister Ardern, Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta and Minister of Oceans and Fisheries David Parker to seize the day and make us proud.

“To maintain respect in the Pacific, the Ardern government needs to start standing up for the things that matter to the Pacific.

“Palau, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa are all calling for a moratorium on seabed mining but so far the New Zealand government is sitting on its hands,” said Hita.

Deep sea mining is a destructive and untested industry where minerals are sucked up from the ocean floor and waste materials pumped back into the ocean.

A sediment plume smothers marine life, threatening vulnerable ecosystems, fisheries and the people’s way of life.

Ocean floor disruptions
Scientists say that disruptions to the ocean floor may also reduce the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon, adding to the climate crisis.

Without action from governments to stop it, mining of the deep seas in the Pacific could begin as early as mid-2023.

• Greenpeace Aotearoa launched a petition in June calling on the NZ government and Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta to support a ban on deep sea mining in the Pacific and around the world. More than 9000 people have signed.

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