Letters

Toxic

New Caledonia

While applauding Pacific Island Monthly’s decision to publish something on Kanaky/New Caledonia from the perspective of a Kanak activist, the article by Susanna Ounei “Kanak La ments French Ploy” fails to extend a discussion on what has, and is, happening in Kanaky/New Caledonia be yond the polemic of the Matignon Accords and the assassination of Jean-Marie Tjibaou. In fact, the most insidious French ploy ever to have been conducted in this ancient archipelago does not even rate a mention the deliberate destruction and unchecked abuse of the Kanak people and their natu ral environment from a cen tury and a quarter of relent less mining and smelting of nickel.

The recent disclosure by the territorial medical au thorities that Kanaky/New Caledonia holds the world record for asthma-related deaths, comes as no surprise.

After all, the territory holds yet another record that of lung cancer in the Central and South Pacific, already linked to the nickel mining industry. Asthma, caused by sensitivity of nickel dust, was disgnosed in Europe as long ago as the early 1950’5, yet

several decades later doctors working on the problem in Kanaky/New Caledonia have chosen to ignore any relation ship between the illness which is estimated to effect up to 10 per cent of the popu lation and pollution from mining and smelting practice, blaming it instead on allergy

to pollens.

The majority of the Kanaks who live in the capital, Nou mea, are housed in low income ghettos, some built within a few metres of the smelter’s guarded gates. They innocently grow their food next to highly toxic tailings’ dumps and fish from the smelter effluent canal. The prevalent wind covers these ghettos in an incessant daily and nightly dose of red and black dust from the smelter’s array of stacks, and people

living in these death-traps

have been complaining of asthma and respiratory prob lems for years. Smelter regu lations forbid emissions when the wind is blowing in the opposite direction, and last year a public apology was

issued by the mining industry

when an inadvertent change of wind direction covered tourist sun-bathers in ‘illegal’ smelter dust. Built within metres of the lagoon, con sidered one of the most beautiful in the world, the smelter covers the waters’ surface with a cloak of dust, visible from the air, which

suffocates plankton and kills the reef. High levels of heavy metals have been found not only in the lagoon, but

throughout the territory in

both the rural and urban drinking water.

With the majority of the medical sector in Kanaky/ New Caledonia still in control of the military, and the major

mining company owned by

the French government, the territorial mining laws and the Mining Pollution Control Commission answerable to the French Atomic Energy Authority, there is obviously a vested interest in ignoring the very real connection be tween pollution from the in dustry and the territory’s alarming health and evironmental problems. Forty per cent of the world’s re sources of nickel, a stragegic metal used among other things, in the nuclear indus try, with deposits predicting too last another 200 years, are to be found in New Cale donia.

Unfortunately, various members of the Kanak inde pendence movement whose charter adopts an anti-nuclear position view nickel as a tried and tested means of ‘easy’ development. This they have done without having really challenged the damage this industry has done to the health of the people they represent. At the FLNKS Congress in April 1991, no acknowledgment was ' made by their Health Corn

mission of the already proven relationship between the min ing and smelting pollution and the poor health of the Kanak people. In 1990, the territory’s Loyalist leader and nickel mil lionaire, Jacques LaFleur, gave the Kanak-controlled Northern Province a 49 per cent share in a nickel mine. A 10-year export deal signed earlier this year has made this mining company the country’s top nickel exporter, j Both nickel and many of its compounds released during the j smelting process, have been classified as carcinogenic, mu-* tagenic and teratogenic by the ' International Agency for Re search on Cancer. The Envir onmental Protection Agency in the US lists nickel as an “Ex tremely Hazardous Sub stance”. World Health Organ isation emission standards for the smelting of nickel are set at levels far, far lower than cur rently in practice in Kanaky/ New Caledonia where there is j a paucity of official information on health problems and risks associated with the industry.

Yet amazingly, the French ploy remains undetected, even by self professed Kanak ‘ex tremists’ that of involving the Kanaks themselves as un suspecting accomplices in the steady flow of a strategic metal France’s continuining court ship with all things nuclear requires, but also as innocent participants in the destruction i of their own health and en vironment.

Susi Newborn Auckland

Continental

correction

I WOULD like to correct the impression you have given to your readers in the May issue of Pacific Islands Monthly that Continental Airlines has withdrawn op erations from the South Pacific effective June.

The article headed “Continental slashes routes Sydney Auckland trips likely to end” is not only misleading but incorrect.

On February 8 of this year, Continen tal Airlines announced that it was re arranging schedules to Melbourne and Brisbane to more closely align capacity to the current market needs. This resulted in withdrawing three non-stop services per week between Melbourne and Hono

lulu and increasing Melbourne/

Auckalnd services by one per week giving a total of five services a week from Melbourne to the USA via Auckland. In the case of Brisbane the three DC-10 services a week to Honolulu via Auck land were replaced by two 8747 s per week.

Services between Sydney and Hono lulu and Auckland were not affected and remain at seven per week on each route.

With a total of 24 flights per week into and out of Australian cities Continental Airlines is still the fourth largest interna tional carrier operating to Australia and is now in its 14th year of operations in the South Pacific .

So as you can see the source of your information is incorrect and therefore the

article is totally misleading and damag

ing to Continental Airlines.

I would appreciate if you could correct

thee impression you have given your

readers.

Brian W. Wild

General Manager Australia

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'acific Islands Monthly,

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