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Tetiarahi Gabriel, Tahiti.Pdf <Tentative Translation from French> Hague Appeal for Peace Global Hibakusha Delegation Core Agenda Program Thursday, May 13, 1999 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.
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