"Ban that French bomb"

There's 'Danger' In Fiji's Rainwater

From a Suva correspondent French delegates attending the South Pacific Conference at Suva in September could be in for a barrage of ban-the-bomb barracking from university students and others who think that radio active fallout from Mururoa Atoll is not conducive to an ideal environment.

The French might even hear a sharp word or two from Fiji’s Chief Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and other Pacific Island leaders on the subject of the present series of nuclear explosions, which are to be continued by them next year.

Any discomfort the French are made to feel will be due to Dr.

Graham Baines, acting head of biology in the School of Natural Resources at the University of the South Pacific, in Suva.

Early in May he caused a stir in Fiji by telling The Fiji Times that since the last Mururoa tests in 1968 the amount of Strontium 90 in Suva’s rainfall had increased fivefold.

He urged people to become con cerned with this fact, for, he said, Strontium 90 was a substance which built up in calcium, and in particular it was absorbed by the growing bones of young children.

Once absorbed by bones the long lived element became for years the source of constant irradiation of body organs, and in particular body cells.

Baines claimed that 75 per cent, of Strontium 90 in Suva’s rainwater was due to the 1968 tests, and that as tests were continued the levels of the element present to be absorbed would build up.

He emphasised that despite all French, and for that matter Austra lian, New Zealand and British Gov ernment assurances that fallout levels were “insignificant”, scientists were entirely ignorant about the long term affects of radiation on human health. Particularly, there was no guarantee that such radio-activity, no matter how small the level, would

not cause gene mutations which would have “unpleasant conse quences” for children born in 30 years time—the next generation.

Referring to “safety” levels quoted by the French, Baines said it was these levels which scientists were increasingly bringing into question.

Ordinary folk in Fiji, unused to direct exposure to unadulterated ban-the-bomb propaganda, were suitably horrified by the biologist’s disclosures.

Australian-born Dr. Baines had joined the USP’s staff in January, after work in Canadian Government laboratories on Strontium 90, and work in Britain on the way radio activity is transmitted through the atmosphere.

He got his figures for Strontium 90 in rainwater from data analysed and published by the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Research Establish ment.

First reaction to his published statements was an invitation from the USP’s Student Christian Movement to address it.

He told the movement’s members that although the 1970 series of tests at Mururoa could not be stopped, something might be achieved in the case of the planned series next year if all South Pacific territories, including Australia and New Zealand, acted together.

“Even a small amount of dissent can grow,” he said, and added that personally he would be writing about the tests to London newspaper editors and the British Conservation Society.

A week later the USP’s Students’

Association, the Fiji Council of Churches and the Fiji YWCA together announced that they would sponsor a public meeting in the Suva Town Hall in an effort to launch a campaign against the French tests on a wider basis.

Among those invited to attend the meeting were the Governor of Fiji, Sir Robert Foster, and the Chief Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara.

Over 500 people university students, churchmen, and a surpris

ingly big number of European resi dents of the class and status not normally seen at protest meetings of any sort—packed the town hall for the meeting.

Sir Robert sent his regrets, saying he did not think a person in his position ought to involve himself in protest movements.

Ratu Sir Kamisese also offered his regrets—he was away in Lau—but he sent Ratu Edward Cakobau, Minuter for Labour, to deputise.

Some time earlier the Chief Minister had stated that as Fiji was still a colony it could lodge protests about the tests only through Britain.

He did not say if any complaint had gone from his government through British channels, or for that matter whether the Fiji Government was opposed to the tests at all.

At the public meeting Ratu Edward said he would report to the Chief Minister the feelings demonstrated.

He added that the Chief Minister’s difficulty was that a contingent of the Fiji Military Forces had been at Christmas Island to assist with the British nuclear tests conducted there in the 1950’5.

Unfortunately some of the popu lated islands closest to the Christmas

Island blasts had been those of French Polynesia.

“The Chief Minister has asked me to say that he will be quite willing to arrange that any representations made to the Government of Fiji in connection with the current French series of tests shall be forwarded on,” Ratu Edward said.

Radiation effects

An attentive audience heard Dr.

Bains repeat his earlier warning, illustrating his talk with the help of a busily ticking geiger counter.

Then Dr. Felix Emberson, vice president of the Fiji Medical Associa tion gorily described the effects of radiation on the human body and ended by declaring his association’s support for the protest movement.

Solomon Islander Francis Saemala, president of the USP’s Students’

Union, outlined the history of the Ban-the-Bomb movement, starting with the CND demonstrations which swept England 10 years ago.

He also recalled the words of the former Premier of Western Samoa, Fiame Mata’afa, at the time of the first French tests in 1968, when Samoa, then the South Pacific’s only

fully independent state, had com plained about the tests.

Mr. Mata’afa admitted that his? small country’s lone voice would notl much affect the French, but that ai thousand small voices raised ini unison, might do so.

Mr. Saemala said his association! would write to all South Pacific: leaders, urging them to take a standi against the further radioactive poison ing of their region’s atmosphere.

The president of the Fiji Council! of Churches, the Reverend P. K..

Davis, said his organisation would) use the Pacific Council of Churches* to urge churches in other territories* to put anti-test pressure on their territorial governments.

When the meeting’s chairman, Dr..

D. J. Lancaster, a Fiji Medical!

Department gynaecologist, invited! ideas for measures to discourage: further tests at Mururoa or anywhere; else in the South Pacific, there were; suggestions that for a start UTA,, the French airline, should be stopped! from flying through Nadi Airport.

Fiji’s first popular protest meeting: of its type ended with three un animous resolutions asking for 1 protests from all sources against the: tests, and the appointment of a com mittee to further the work of pro testing.

Rim's Covers Uncovered

Sir, —Why is it that a re spectable high-quality magazine like Pacific Islands Monthly displays native girls naked on its front cover (April, 1970)?

One would hope that an Australian publication would set a higher stan dard than this.

Nigel Cooper.

Port Moresby,

P-Ng.

Sir, —I give you greeting, and hope all goes well with PIM. But—as a long-time subscriber—l have a grumble about the cover of the May issue.

Those girls look to me to be only about octoroons, not true Islanders.

The brassieres depress me. What’s wrong with bare breasts? The skirts look like shredded nylon, the flowers seem more like plastic than anything out of nature’s garden, the belt ornaments a product of Czecho slavakia, the males like poorly trained chorus boys; not to speak of the billiard tabley lawn. In short the sort of put-on for gullible tourists who are spending six hours ashore.

I hope you’re not offended at what you may consider carping. Others say the same.

Goya Henry.

Harbord, Sydney.

Spoiling Niue's Name

Sir, —I was up in Rabaul last week and bought my PIM for May. I didn’t like the article, “Tarzan the Apeman” by J. Edward Brown (p, 85). He sure spoilt Niue’s name, and with a new hotel for “1,000 tourists” a year coming.

Why didn’t Mr. J. E. Brown ask the assembly to look at the way the film society is running things. But not just sit there and yak away about how the people behaved, and the pro jectionist in shiny, orange, cheap, Hong Kong trousers, and barefooted.

And the censor’s chair removed from some European expatriate’s residence.

And the big, fat, old woman.

It won’t help anything to say all these funny remarks. The Govern ment Inspector should see to it that the owner builds a real building with everything in it, before he gives him the licence to run it.

In my travels I have seen worse places. I don’t have to mention any places, but I have been around the world a bit. So anyway Mr. King Edward Brown VI, let’s try to put Niue up a step, not down.

Able Seaman Dean Anaki.

MV Auckland Exporter , Brisbane.