Half-truths, glaring omissions,

Official Document On Moruroa Tests

Half-truths, glaring omissions, downright lies, critics claim

Marie-Therese And Bengt Danielsson Subject A

recent statement released by the French embassy in Canberra (RIM Jun p3l) on nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll, French Polynesia, to rigorous analysis and are notably unimpressed with what they find in it.

Arch-conservative French presi dents of the past de Gaulle, Pompidou and Giscard react ed to criticism of the Moruroa nuclear tests by wrapping them selves in a cloak of haughty official silence. The present pseudo-socialist government of President Mitterrand, which took over the reins of power in May 1981, seemed keen from the start to break with this offensive “no comment” policy.

The first to preach the doctrine of a “Pacific dialogue” was the new Defence Minister, Charles Hemu, who, during a visit to French Polynesia in August 81 (PIM Oct ’Bl p 22), made the following eminently sensible statement: “The press must be informed about security prob lems. If there is an accident (at Moruroa) it is better to the let the truth be known than to let all sorts of rumors spread. Nothing must be hidden that affects the health of the population. When New Zealand and Australia ask for information, we shall supply it.”

For one reason or another, it has taken the French Govern ment 18 months to come good on this promise. But, finally, all French embassies in the Pacific region have begun distributing lengthy statements to the press on the Moruroa tests. The one released by the French embassy in Canberra (PIM Jun p3l) deals in impressive detail with various aspects of the testing program, and the possible health hazards arising from it. The happy con clusion reached by the authors at the close of almost every parag raph is that, unlike the Ameri can, British, Russian and Chin ese tests, the explosion of 96 atomic bombs at Moruroa and Fangataufa has not given rise to the slightest harmful radioactive fall-out. This highly self congratulatory document merits a close, point-by-point analysis. 1. What France does in French Polynesia is nobody

else’s business, because France owns these islands. To start off with an arrogant statement of this sort is certainly not suggestive of

a high degree of diplomatic

finesse, to say the least of it, especially in view of the fact that all Pacific leaders most definitely believe that they have a right and a duty to protest against any nuclear pollution of their ter ritories. As many readers will recall, it was this form of en vironmental aggression which was the basis of the complaint lodged with the International Court of Justice at the Hague by the Australian and New Zealand Governments in 1973. It was also the basis of the attitude adopted by all West African gov ernments in the early 19605, when their territories were ex posed to radio-active clouds from the French nuclear tests in the Sahara desert, which France “owned” until Algeria won its

independence.

This general disapproval led to the transfer of the tests to Moruroa and Fangataufa and a long series of protests from all

Polynesian leaders, accompanied

by appeals to France to stop testing atomic weapons in their islands. 2. The nuclear tests are an essential part of France’s de fence policy. Perhaps. But this is beside the point, since the elect ed representatives of the Polyne sian people, sitting in the Territo rial Assembly, have never sought to interfere with French defence policy. All they ask of the French Government is that they conduct their tests guaranteed as per fectly harmless by all their own experts in France.

3. Radio-activity is carefully monitored by the French army and Atomic Energy Commis sion. As in Australia and New Zealand, there exists in France a National Radiation Laboratory.

But, strangely enough, this gov ernment agency has never been permitted to undertake any radia tion studies whatever in French Polynesia. Instead, the two bodies responsible for the nuc lear testing program the army and the AEC evaluate the health hazards resulting from them. In other words, the ac cused sits in judgement on his own case. Similar, the territory’s health department is headed by an army doctor with the rank of general, and the so-called public hospital at Mamao, Papeete, is likewise mn by army doctors. 4. For the whole of 1982, all personnel on Moruroa Atoll collectively received a radia tion dose of only 4800 mrems.

Sweeping statements of this kind are meaningless, especially as no information is supplied about seasonal variations, and the par ticularly hot spots.

The only way to get a fairly accurate picture of the extent of nuclear pollution at Moruroa is to study the well-documented re port prepared by the people most directly involved the French technicians connected with the socialist trade union federation CFDT, who live and work on the atoll.

This frightening report dated October 19, 1981, reveals among other things that the north coast of the atoll is impregnated with lethal plutonium whose half-life is 24,000 years; that the pile of nuclear waste which has been

allowed to accumulate on the reef covers an area of 30,000 square metres; and that there are numerous faults in the atoll, showing that much underground seepage and leakage must have taken place. Further details were furnished at the time by the lead ing Australian newspapers. Our own summary of the CFDT re port appeared in PIM, January, 1982. 5. The air pollution at Moruroa is practically nil, as anyone can find out for them selves. With blinding scientific precision, the French embassy in Canberra records that in 1981, “alpha element radio-activity as expressed in femto-curies per cubic metre of air” was only three in Moruroa, three in Tahiti, but 25 at Montlhery near Paris, and a scary 106 in Senegal. This may well explain why so many Frenchman and Africans have migrated to French Polynesia in recent years. But as an indication of the level of air pollution it is worthless since it leaves unans wered such basic questions as: How many samples were taken, and where, on the atoll? If this is the annual average, what were the maximum and minimum fi gures? And so on . . .

Particularly puzzling is the ac companying assertion that air pollution “can easily be checked by anybody with basic equip ment taking samples outside ter ritorial waters downwind from Mururoa”.

Even if a private citizen managed to sneak into the re stricted zones around Momma and Fangataufa the proposed ob servations would be of very little interest today, considering that atmospheric testing was aban doned eight years ago!

Any meaningful observations would have to be made by med ical doctors systematically ex amining representative samples of the whole population of French Polynesia. If French ar my doctors have ever made any

such thorough health survey, the results have never been published. 6. No sea pollution has oc curred, as proved by the fact that military and civilian per sonnel at Moruroa are allowed to go swimming in the lagoon.

Swimming has not always been permitted, and what is more the French technicians who wrote the CFDT report believe that the ban should never have been lift ed. There is also the tragic case of former Governor Jean Sicu rani. He often went swimming in the lagoon in a period when megatonne H-bombs were being exploded and eventually died of leukemia. He could also, of course, have been contaminated at many other places in the test area which are above water . . .

It is in any case quite ridicul ous to pretend that personnel swimming in the lagoon during their leisure hours could know anything about the amount of damage and pollution that have occurred in the base of the atoll at a depth of 600-1000 metres, where the bombs are

exploded. We may ask: who me asures the plutonium and carbon -14 which slowly sink to the bottom of the ocean only to re emerge years later through the food chain at the surface? It is high time for Captain Cousteau and his bathyscape to be stationed permanently at Moruroa to carry out regular “in depth” studies. 7. Data regularly sent to the United Nations Scientific Com mittee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), plus those collected by a “UN An tenna” in French Polynesia, prove conclusively that the tests are harmless. The truth is quite different. If we examine not only the French reports, but also the minutes of the UN SCEAR meetings, we shall im mediately find that committee members are constantly comp laining about “the paucity of the data” supplied, which makes it impossible for them to reach “any valid conclusions”. Read ers interested in the subject will find a more searching analysis of the annual reports sent by France

to UNSCEAR in our book Moruroa, mon amour (Penguin 1977).

As for the so-called “UN An tenna”, it is simply the same old army laboratory in Tahiti, re named Laboratoire d’ etude et de surveillance de V environnement, and its only connection with the UN is that it gathers the highly unsatisfactory data from which the above-mentioned inadequate reports are put together.

But, talking of UN reports, there is also one marked A/35/392, dated September 12, 1980. It was especially prepared for the UN by the prestigious International Commission on Radiological Protection, and pre dicts that no fewer than 15,000 people in the southern hemis phere will eventually die as a result of radiation doses received from all American, British, and French nuclear tests. The fact that the number of victims will be 10 times higher in the more densely populated northern hemisphere is no consolation.

Not a word is said in the French Moruroa report about this impor tant UN document. 8. The number of cancer cases in French Polynesia is in no way higher than in other parts of the world. In support of this bold statement, France’s Canberra embassy presents a table of statistics headed “Cases of Cancer in French Polynesia”.

The figures given are: 62 in 1977, 65 in 1978, 85 in 1979, 58 in 1980, and 71 in 1981, which represents an incidence of about 50 cases per 100,000 population.

This compares very favorably indeed with the averages for Australia (106), France (175), and New Zealand (264). Won derful, if it were true.

Actually, the statistics pub lished by the French embassy do not show the total number of cancer cases in French Polynesia (as the heading would have us believe). They show only the number of cases treated in the Namao government hospital, and one small private hospital in Papeete.

Conspicuously lacking are da ta concerning cancer patients treated by: The 80 doctors in private practice who, until a few months ago, had no obligation to provide information on such mat

ters; the Polynesian healers and various quacks; the special hos pital for military and civilian personnel on Moruroa, where all data are top secret; the doctors in France who are consulted by former servicemen discharged after serving in French Polynesia for shorter or longer periods. (A parallel with this last category is provided by the belated discov ery in the U.S. and Australia that servicemen present during nuc lear testing in Nevada and at Maralinga were contaminated to such an extent that they got cancer.) Finally, there are large num bers of people living in remote islands of French Polynesia where there are no doctors at all, and who consequently die from all sorts of diseases, including cancer, without receiving any medical treatment at all.

Yet, in the French embassy statement, a glaringly incomplete collection of figures is compared with the overwhelmingly more comprehensive and reliable can cer statistics kept by countries like Australia, France and New Zealand, and the totally unwar ranted conclusion is drawn that the rate in French Polynesia is much lower.

This is an unabashed attempt to deceive the governments and peoples of the South Pacific, no more and no less.

It should also be noted that it was precisely because of the abs ence of reliable health statistics in French Polynesia that the World Health Organisation in 1981 pressed the local health authorities to start a cancer regis ter on the internationally ap proved model. Sad to say, it is still in its development stages. 9. The most common form of cancer is lung cancer, and the cause is heavy smoking.

Once again, the statistics are reassuring only because they are so outrageously incomplete. The only good thing about this part of the statement is that the embassy has refrained from repeating the preposterous claim of the local health department in French Polynesia that heavy smoking is the sole cause of all cancer cases.

Is it really necessary to point out that all medical research points to the fact that the worst thing about exposure to radiation is that it

lowers the general level of resist ance of its victims, who thus are rendered more liable to contract all manner of deseases, and to

die younger?

10. Reliable statistics on the number of cancer patients evacuated to hospitals overseas are readily available. This is simply not true. For example, if we take the New Zealand figure of 13 in 1982, it represents only the cancer patients sent there by the territorial health department, and thus excludes the much grea ter number who paid out of their own pockets for the trip and treatment in New Zealand. Al though this country is the desti nation of most Polynesian cancer victims who can afford a trip abroad, others, also go to Hawaii, the U.S. mainland, and France.

The most interesting conclu sion to be drawn from the official figures concerns the gradual re duction of cancer patients de spatched by the territorial health department to New Zealand (39 in 1979 as against 13 in 1982), and the simultaneous increase in the number sent for treatment at military hospitals in France (18 in 1979 as against 49 in 1982).

The explanation for all this is

undoubtedly the inquisitive na

ture of the New Zealand press, which has no counterpart in met

ropolitan France.

Fully aware of the worthless ness of all these official “health certificates” and bland asur ances, the 30 elected members of French Polynesia’s Territorial

Assembly have repeatedly asked

for an independent investigation

of the health situation in the territory. The last time they made such a formal request was in December 1981, when they un animously adopted a resolution setting up a scientific committee of inquiry composed of impar tial, civilian French and foreign radio-biologists and doctors, and establishing a territorial radiation laboratory.

Up to now, the French Gov ernment has done all in its power to prevent implemenation of this decision.

Its latest trick has been to send

presidential adviser Regis De

bray to invite on its own terms “special observers’’ from a number of Pacific countries to make a quick conducted tour of the nuclear testing site. Fortu nately, the new majority leader in French Polynesia, Gaston Flosse, refuses to be sidetracked in this manner. He is inviting a dozen or so heavily qualified and

independent-minded radio

biologists and doctors to sign up for the thorough-going health survey which alone and at long last can establish the whole truth.

Marie-Thérèse and Bengt Danielsson.