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| Gambier Island Inhabitants want access to French Defence Ministry Files |
| 2005-05-20 |
| INHABITANTS of the Gambier islands in French Polynesia have called for access to defence ministry files on the impact on their health of 30 years of French nuclear tests on Pacific atolls. In the request, Gambier mayor Monique Richeton and several inhabitants of Mangareva island asked "that they be granted access to information and documents to enable them to understand the effects on their health and that of their descendants of the nuclear tests carried out in French Polynesia". Roland Oldham, president of the "Murura e Tatou" (Mururoa and us) association of some 5000 Polynesians who worked on the two nuclear sites in Polynesia between 1966 and 1996, said "reports stamped 'Secret' from 1966 found (they) mention considerable radioactive fallout on the inhabited islands and atolls close to Mururoa, in particular on the island of Mangareva, in the Gambier archipelago". Mr Oldham also recalls the very powerful "Aldebaran" nuclear test carried out in Mururoa from a barge on July 2, 1966 in the presence of then French leader General Charles de Gaulle. "The program of the presidential visit required that one carried out the launch despite bad atmospheric conditions, and a launch from a barge always causes intense nuclear pollution because the debris is carried up." Mr Oldham said that the fallout was carried by the wind to Gambier, 500 kilometres away. "The United States recognised that fallout could be carried for 700 kilometres around in good weather and that, naturally, one could not control the winds," he said. In Rikitea, the main village on Mangareva, two bunkers were built in 1967 to shelter the population during atmospheric nuclear tests. "A sprinkler system allowed the roof of the bunker to be washed after the test," said islander Tihoni Riesing, "and the population could spend up to 48 hours locked up in the bunker when you did not have the right to leave and where the air was filtered through special apparatus". The French defence ministry today described as "baseless" allegations by two French newspapers that the army knowingly exposed the people of French Polynesia to heightened risks during nuclear tests in the 1990s. "The conditions under which the people of French Polynesia were protected at the time of the atmospheric nuclear tests were strictly the same as those applied to military personnel conducting the tests," defence ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said. For 30 years, French Polynesia provided Paris with a site for nuclear tests on the Pacific atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa, west of the Gambier islands, where a total of 193 tests took place - 41 atmospheric and 152 underground. The last atmospheric test, under a tethered balloon dubbed "Aquarius", took place on September 14, 1974, and the last underground test was on January 27, 1996, in Fangataufa. |
| Posted by:Spavirt Pheng6042 |