The Recognition by France of its Political Responsibility for the Consequences of Nuclear Tests Conducted from 1966 to 1996 at Moruroa and Fangataufa in the Pacific is a Need for Justice and Peace for Their Civilian and Military Victims
TETIARAHI Gabriel HITI TAU, Polynesia
1. French Arrogance
July 1995. We all have in memory the blatant arrogance of France seen on all TV screens around the world, when President Chirac imposed on the people of Polynesia another 10 atomic bombs blasts. This decision to resume nuclear testing was felt by 90 to 95% of the population as an abuse to its dignity. It had offended all social and ethnic groups of the population of Polynesian Territory, deeply hurt in their entrails. Upon the announcement of the decision on June 1995, all the political and religious actors demonstrated peacefully in the streets of the capital, Papeete. Antinuclear activists had engaged actions of all kinds, respecting the principle of non-violence. Mass demonstrations, information campaigns on the consequences of nuclear testing on the health and environment, meeting with the President of the Republic of Paris, construction of the peace village, formation of a peace flotilla, recourse to the European Court of Justice and the UN Committee on Human Rights in New York, supports from the peoples of the Pacific and the international community did not receive any echo other than disregard and indifference. There was no space for social dialogue even though the decision to resume nuclear testing endangered the future of a whole people, or rather the destiny of ratification process of international treaties on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. Worse, 8 bombs exploded at Moruroa and Fangataufa from September 1997 to January 1998. The French Head of State made France, the Nation of human rights, a rogue state. At the same time, over 200 bombs violated the land of the Maohi people through 30 years of their experimentation. And the Polynesian people were never consulted on this. The right to express one’s opinion over such a violence by a referendum was never recognized to them. Nuclear tests were imposed on them by the successive Presidents of French Republic: De Gaulle, Pompidou, Giscrad d’Estaing, Mitterrand and Chirac. Deaf to the call in Polynesia, the Pacific and the world, these political leaders bear a heavy responsibility for the consequences of nuclear tests on the island populations, on their health and environment.
2. The tongues of the victims have been untied and are accusing the French military
Until 1996, the military had always turned into derision much too few employees of civilian companies working at Moruroa when they spoke without revealing their identities. Since 1996, the situation has changed. The former participants to nuclear tests have broken the law of silence and disclosed what they had kept in their hearts to the investigation teams of Polynesian organizations, Hit Tau and the Evangelic Church. Surrounded by university people and independent civilian research centers, the investigators had no difficulty for elaborating a database with over 2000 names. More than 1000 former test site workers had been visited at their homes or on their new workplaces. 737 of them were interviewed at length and responded a 38-page questionnaire with 132 questions related to their recruitment, working and living conditions, their professional activities and the health system that had provided them medical care. “Moruroa and us”, a publication issued in October 1997, reconstitutes the memory of Moruroa, Fangataufa and Hao and restitutes to the nuclear test victims their right to speak. Thus, the revelation by a former civilian worker who recounts: “I had worked on the test site several times. Since then, I noticed spots all over my body, especially on the hips and the leg. My skin is chapped and looks like a crust. In 1984, my first son was born. At his birth, I noticed that he had the same skin texture as mine. At the birth of my second son, I noticed the same problem. My fourth boy showed the same infirmity. It is horrible to see.” Thus, a former employee of one of the meteorological stations which belonged to the army in Hereheretu in the Tuamotu told how that island has been evacuated in 1968/69 due to the atmospheric tests conducted under balloon at some hundreds kilometers from there. The personnel were made up of two teams of 5 employees. They left the island after a year and half, but when they returned there in 1973, they learned that their old coworkers had all died, probably of leukemia. In 1995, they decided to make known their experiences and were deprived shortly after of their job of air-controller at Tahiti Faaa airport. 10% of the former workers were not yet of age. The research established that out of 12 to 15 thousand Polynesians who took part in the nuclear tests, 10% were under 18 years old, and 6% under 16 years old when they were recruited. Children who were 13 years old, sometimes 10 years or 12 years old were recruited by subcontracting civilian companies. Nearly 49% of the workers had spent their working hours within contaminated areas. 41% worked in these zones when the tests were still made in atmosphere. 54% of the employees who worked within probably contaminated areas think that they happened to be forced to execute tasks against their own will. Former Moruroa workers considered that their stay there was assorted with contradictions. Thus, the demarcation zones between contaminated and non-contaminated areas could be suddenly changed overnight or during a single day. Many of them received orders to execute tasks in contaminated areas with precautions they deemed insufficient or where many others were prohibited from entering. When these workers questioned their superiors on the nature or the extent of the risks, they were ordered to return to Tahiti. Many rules were judged by them to be contradictory or tended to change over time. It is the case of the prohibition to catch fish in the lagoon or to drink coconut water. The ban to eat fresh fish was lifted at certain periods but not everywhere. Fishing was allowed in living areas but not in workplaces. These contradictory rules nurtured rumors that the sea was also contaminated. The prohibition of consuming coconut water during atmospheric tests made the people believe that the soil and the flora were contaminated. But it was rather against the official health system and the cynical allegations of the military that the precautions measures at Moruroa were unique in the world that the former Moruroa workers make a genuine requisitely. 41% of these workers declare that they worked in areas susceptible of being contaminated. 30% of them did not wear any protection clothes. Before having been recruited, 94% of the Moruroa workers had undergone medical controls. At the end of employment contact and when they left Moruroa, only 48% of them were examined by a doctor. Among them 75% had never been communicated of the results if the medical control. One of ever two workers did not have a medical visit when they left Moruroa. This is to say that the medical follow-up of both civilian and military personnel, whether they were Polynesians or metropolitan, whether they belong to the army or the Commissariat of Atomic Energy, was not made in the best conditions. 91.3% did not trust the official health system which they accuse of deficiency and lack of transparency. 26% of the workers consider that they were not in good health when they left Moruroa and 21% believe having been contaminated by radioactivity. These testimonies of the former civilian workers of military bases illustrate in what extent they were directly exposed to contamination, how much the ground and the underground of crime scenes, Moruroa and Fangataufa were destroyed by the violent explosions. These workers were deceived. The questions pose on, -the identities of former workers who were children between 10 and 16 years old; -the bodies of Moruroa workers buried in lead coffins because they were contaminated; -the employees deceased on the sited and whose bodies were taken to France; -the reason why the families of the deceased workers were not allowed to see the remaining of their fathers, their husbands or brothers; remain unanswered.
3. The reports of the IAEA ordered by President Chirac are not reassuring
After 30 years of experimentation, France asked the IAEA in Vienna to expertize the radiological situation of the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa in order to know whether there are risks for the population and to make recommendations on the nature, the extent and duration of surveillance activities, of corrective measured that could be necessary. The mandate of the study excluded however the retrospective evaluation of doses in the past, especially during the period of atmospheric tests. In June 1998, the IAEA made public its conclusions. “It is not necessary to continue the surveillance of environment in Moruroa and Fangataufa for radiological protection purposes. And no corrective measures are necessary for radiological protection purposes, now and in future.” These hurried conclusions have not convinced many scientists and the Polynesian people. The IAEA revealed that the two atolls the fact that radiation had been accumulated in the underground of radioactive waste storage sites. There are 149 places where radioactive waste is stored in the underground saturated with water. On the basis of the IAEA expertise, the total activity of accumulated waste in the underground reaches 13, 729 tetrabecquerels in Moruroa and 3,842 tetrabecquerels in Fangataufa. These figures are 371 times and 94 times bigger the basic nuclear facilities ranking threshold values for the category of largest facilities: nuclear power plants, reprocessing plants and major storage centers for radioactive. It is improper that the IAEA does not recommend either surveillance or counter-measures and its conclusions are contrary to both French law and fundamental principles of radioprotection, On the other hand, the IAEA reveals an extended but very variable contamination of the accessible environment in the atolls. In the north of Moruroa, the levels of plutonium 239 and americium 241, the very superficial distribution of pollutants and the presence of hot particles, require at least, at the default of a rigorous decontamination, the implementation of counter measures guaranteeing the signalization of risks and access control. This discovery of plutonium by the IAEA has exposed the lies of the army and its reassuring press releases during the past 30 years that “France has always given the greatest care to its air experiments which represented only 3% of the world experimentation so that they were conducted with the greatest security measures, particularly for the health of the personnel.” No one, the Polynesians in any case, believes in these lies of the military. The IAEA assures that the radioactivity heritage they leave includes also radioactive waste in the lagoons and the ocean, a contaminated environment as well as hazardous areas. And if the IAEA did not recommend specific surveillance of the test sites, it is because it was mistaken. It is the responsibility of the French State to ensure the surveillance, to follow the evolution of radioactive wastes and engage reflection on the way of conserving at a very long term the record of radioactive contents of the atolls in association with independent civilian research teams.
4. The INSERM report on the cancer incidence is of equal importance The INSERM (National Institute on Health and Medical Research), its unit U521 in 1990 detached Florent VALTHAIRE and Beatrice LE VU, epidemiologists for a study on the effects of atmospherics tests on cancers in Polynesia. It took 4 years to draw the first conclusions. The study was financed by the DIRCEN, the army. The major results of this study is the very high rate of cancer and thyroid in Polynesia which is twice bigger among the Maoris in New Zealand, in particular among women for whom the rate doubled between 1985-1989 and 1990-1995. Worse, the Polynesia would keep the world record. The report was also established that the cases of thyroid cancer among Polynesians around Moruroa who were 15 years old or over during the period of atmospherics tests were excessively numerous. In the Tuamotu, the archipel of two nuclear test sites, the thyroid cancer incidence accounts for 60% of the cancer cases against 18% in the rest of Polynesia. The authors of the report recommend to extend the investigations. On one hand, because their study was only on diagnosed cases and it is therefore possible that Polynesians died of a cancer without being diagnosed. In other words, as the cancer register exists only since 1984, if people died of leukemia, thyroid cancer or malignant tumors before that, none will know it. On the other hand, their preliminary study did not rely upon detailed surveys on the evidence cases with individual interview of the subjects or their family members. The army and the CEA (Center of Atomic Experimentation) invoke the report to attest the innocuity of the nuclear tests. And ever since, while the authors of the report have recommended it for transparency, the military have never informed the people concerned themselves and epidemiologists the does measured on dosimeters on the test site workers nor have they made public all the environmental measures implemented by their laboratories SMRPMS and SMRB during the period of atmospheric tests as well as the estimated does and models utilized. It is to say that all is not clear. Why did the INSERM only have access to a list of 17 cases of people with cancers of whom 2 are yet to be identified, but the 3 researchers have never had on site access to any medical charts? 17 cases out of 12, 000, number of Polynesians estimated to have worked on the nuclear test sites. In the same register, the Polynesian people with consideration for truth and transparency still await that complementary studies will be made on cancer incidence of population at risk, namely the former test site workers and the civilian population around Moruroa (atolls of Turei and the Gambiew Islands), as well as on the thyroid cancer incidence among Polynesian women (one of the highest in the world), and on the people who were children during the period of atmospheric tests.
5. The demand for truth and transparency of the Polynesians against the intransigence of the military and the French government
Since the last nuclear test in 1996, the CEA have always hidden behind the lead wall of military secrecy to not provide the teams of independent civilian researchers with archive documents.
Since the disclosure of a number of secret reports on the period of atmospheric tests, in particular the report of Doctor Millon on the evaluation of damage in Fangataufa after the first test on July 2, 1996, the military authorities, under the direct protection of the governments of France and its heads of state, have lied to the Polynesians and the peoples of the Pacific on the risks they run. In September 1998, before the judges of the trial of 58 people who took part in the riot at the incendiated Tahiti Faaa airport in September 1995, the witnesses demanded the disclosure of military archives to establish truth. The legitimate concerns of the Polynesians around the Polynesia Evangelic Church, the NGOs, political personalities of Polynesia, born out of the controversies over the publications of Moruroa of the IAEA and the INSERM are today relayed by several religious organizations, the World Council of Churches at its last assembly in Haare, by the French parliamentarians who did not hesitate to participate to a symposium on the nuclear testing within French National Assembly, held in Paris in February 1999 and independent and civilian scientific organizations, the CRIIRAD in particular. There are many arguments on which depend the rights of the Polynesian people to more transparency, to more respect for their dignity and a more promising future for future generations. There are also in the side of the successive governments of French Republic an obligation of memory towards the radiation victims. Not so long ago, President Chirac has inclined himself before the atrocities committed against the Jews and presented the excuses of France to the Jewish community. The Polynesians people await a gest for avoiding a French evil: colonialism, racism and nuclear terrorism. These nuclear test victims have the right to national excuses of universal importance. It is the price that needs to be paid for reconciliation between the 2 peoples. They must rather inspire themselves for the example of Clinton administration which, upon its entering in office, lifted the military secrecy on the nuclear tests and experimentations. The truth is indeed not to be glory of those who have worked for the American bomb. However, it is being brought to light and to the entire honor of a democratic government. May France follow that example and go beyond the collective incounscient that one should not set forward too far a past which one is ashamed of. Instead, in the face of the demand for truth and light on nuclear tests made by the Polynesians, France is trying to turn the page without recognizing at all its political responsibility for the consequences of its nuclear tests on the health and environment of the Polynesians. It is somehow the denial of the right of existence of the Polynesians and the right to survival of the victims of French nuclear tests.