Nuclear Justice in Maohi Nui

By Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross

Part I of “Nuclear Justice in Maohi Nui” can be found at nukewatchinfo.org/nuclear-justice-in-maohi-nui and in the Spring 2024 Quarterly.

 

Morgant-Cross was elected to the Polynesian Assembly of Representatives in May 2023 and shepherded a unanimous Assembly vote supporting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.My grandparents and parents were anti-nuclear activists, but it wasn’t a topic of family discussion during my childhood. There are several reasons for this. One was that they didn’t think they knew enough. There was also a clash in beliefs about the consequences of France’s nuclear testing in Maohi Nui, also known as its colonized name French Polynesia. There was the knowledge that the nuclear bomb had health consequences versus the powerful rhetoric of the French government, which emphatically stated that French nuclear tests were “clean.” You could sense that the elders didn’t want to talk about it because of the trauma it caused them. And finally, there was a fear of speaking out: a fear of reprisals if you talked about nuclear power and opposed the French government. Indeed, our population still bears the scars of the arrest and exile of Mr. Pouvana’a a O’opa, who advocated for independence from France. He was targeted by the French colonial justice system for “terrorist acts,” which were fabricated by agents of the French state.

French nuclear weapons testing continued until 1996 when I was seven years old. Between 1966 and 1996, France detonated 193 nuclear bombs on our islands in the South Pacific. Maohi Nui belongs to France as a collectivity, a status that compromises our sovereignty on nuclear and other issues.

As a collectivity, Maohi Nui has been forced to accept France’s policies regarding the effects of testing. In 1977, under the guise of giving Maohi Nui greater autonomy, France handed over responsibility for health, leaving the territory to bear the heavy financial burden of all the radiation-induced diseases. After repeating for decades that nuclear bombs were clean, it wasn’t until 2006 that France was forced to recognize that there had been radioactive contamination.

Since 2011, there has been a French compensation program for health affects related to the testing, but it’s very complex and not at all impartial. People have to assemble a multitude of medical documents. Some of these documents are inaccessible, under control of the French army since the time when the army managed medical care. The application procedure is biased because it’s the French who decide who is compensated, the same people who talk about “clean” nuclear testing. Many Polynesians are treated in Paris, 10,000 miles from their island, after a 24-hour plane journey. Those treated abroad are the luckiest, because Polynesia can pay for their travel.

With a medical system thirty years behind the U.S., Maohi Nui just can’t manage the health care for those suffering as a result of the radioactive contamination. There are some people that decide not to have kids because they don’t want them to end up with leukemia.

My own diagnosis of leukemia led me into activism. Despite oppression and misinformation, the grassroots anti-nuclear movement in Maohi Nui has gained some strength among the population. It started with the anti-nuclear association Moruroa e Tatou, founded in 2001. Other organizations are Association 193, which helps people put together compensation files, and the pro-independence movement, led by Mr. Oscar Temaru. In October 2018, Mr. Temaru filed a complaint against the French Republic before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity for the 193 nuclear bombs detonated on Polynesian territory. However, the ICC is only concerned with crimes committed after 2002 and, above all, complaints must be brought by a State, while French Polynesia is a collectivity. The complaint was therefore inadmissible.

The national and international anti-nuclear movement have led to some advances. I presented a motion in support of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to the Polynesian Assembly of Representatives, which voted unanimously in favor of the resolution in September 2023. On a local level, the fight consists of properly educating the population about our nuclear history, which has been concealed by France and played down for too long. Internationally, the movement is denouncing the environmental and health consequences of France’s 193 nuclear weapons tests, in the hope that France will pay this debt and also with the wish to benefit from cooperation and aid from other states.