Yachtsman 'scratches'

France's conscience

PEELED by the French from French Polynesian waters, single ier protest yachtsman Michael :iall berthed his 30 ft sloop nen at Rarotonga in mid-August declared that “the French nuclear ig is surely the ultimate act of nialism”. r Wignall, ex-Senior Crown Pro tor in Papua New Guinea, where ✓orked from 1966 to 1970, sailed yacht into the test area after tell the French in a letter, “If my >n causes some impediment to • government’s will and scratches consciousness of a few more an beings, then this short voyage have achieved much.” e was almost 100 miles away from uroa when the first bomb was ex ed. He sailed Carmen into French mal waters at Tureia on July ind reached Mururoa the follow day after being buzzed by French tary aircraft. ar three days he remained with 'rench territorial waters at Muru and once sailed close enough to that the atoll rose only a few above sea level, that it had no »nut palms and that several build , three and four storeys high, had t built there. He sailed almost up the island because he was not

equipped to transmit radio messages and he wanted the French to find him.

They did. A French naval vessel, Orage, circled him all one morning, then he was boarded by a party of three naval officers and two gen darmes. He was handed a notice, written in French and English, tel ling him that he had entered French territorial waters on two occasions— at Tureia on July 28 and Mururoa on July 29, and that if he did so again his yacht would be seized.

Michael Wignall noticed that the young, English-speaking officers looked embarrassed. The Carmen was then towed beyond the 12-mile limit.

He was between 40 and 50 miles from Mururoa and bound for Raro tonga when the second bomb was ex ploded. He saw nothing of the ex plosion as the sky was overcast and cloudy. The absence of land birds around the atoll made him wonder if the tests had anything to do with

From W. H. PERCIVAL in Rarotonga

it. Normally, he said, one saw noddies and white terns up to a 20-mile radius from an island and frigate birds up to 70 miles from land. It seemed that nobody had yet made a study of the effect of nuclear blasts on bird life.

Mr Wignall, who also told the French that their tests were “an of fence against all Pacific peoples and a crime against the Earth itself,” said, on arrival at Rarotonga, “The Poly nesians of the Eastern Pacific have already suffered greatly at the hands of Europeans. What is left is to be risked again, if not at Mururoa, then at Eiao where underground testing is contemplated in the future.

“Few people in the world have less real voice than the people of French Polynesia. It is inconceivable to me that the United Nations have not al ready, under the General Assembly’s Declaration on the Granting of In dependence to Colonial countries and Peoples, directed their attention to French Polynesia. The French posi tion is in essence no different to the Portugese position in Africa. The French nuclear testing is surely the ultimate act of colonialism.”

Fiji’s Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, agrees. He told Fiji Parliament in September that the most effective action Fiji could take against French nuclear explosions was “to persuade the Committee of 24 on Colonialism to hasten the liberation of the islands which are at present regarded as French territory”.