The Forum
p. 25 · Read in the full issue
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France, you got it wrong
FRANCE appeared to have taken some comfort in comments attrib uted to a senior Australian scien tists during the recent South Pacific Environment Ministers’ meeting in Brisbane that its nuclear tests in the South Pacific are safe.
Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisations executive director Helen Garnett was quoted as saying that long-term health risks from French nuclear tests on the South Pacific atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa were expected to be minimal. No, sir. The media only told half the story.
What the media failed to make it clear to its listeners, readers and viewers is that the comments by Professor Garnett was made on the basis of avail able data. In other words, Australian sci entists do not have up-to-date raw data to make an informed assessment on the risks nuclear testing has posed to the health of the peoples of the South Pacific, let alone their fragile environ ment, especially those closest to the test sites.
What they have is censored data, dat ing back to 1983 and 1987 when the last scientific mission visited Mururoa. They do not have data on Fangataufa which was subjected to heavier blasts from nuclear devices with yields of up to 150 kilotons. In fact, no scientific mission has ever been allowed on Fangataufa, 40km south of Mururoa Atoll.
Despite its stated policy of trans parency, France has not provided any raw data to the scientific community for many years to enable scientists to make an independent assessment on the risks and potential risks to human health and danger and potential danger to the envi ronment. It was on this basis that profes sor Garnett made her comments.
It should be emphasised that these
comments should not be seen as a licence for France to continue to use other people’s backyard as a dis posal dump for its radioactive and other waste mate rials. The French Government has an obligation to
the international community of which the Pacific’s 26 million people are part, to ensure that they too live without the fear and threat of dreaded diseases
resulting from nuclear testing.
In fact, France did acknowledge its obligation at the NPT and Extension conference in New York earlier this year.
At the conference, all nuclear weapons states including France and China pledged to exercise “utmost restraint” pending the signing next year of a truly Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
France’s recent announcement to resume its 29-year-old nuclear testing programme in the South Pacific this month makes a mockery of this pledge.
It calls into question, doesn’t it, France’s
sincerity in making such pledges.
No one disputes the sovereign right
of any country to defend itself when its national interest is being threatened or perceived to be under threat. For this reason, a nation has every right to do all in its power to defend itself. Their right which, in this case amount to insecurity, is not a licence to use other people’s backyard to develop a weapons system which will one day obliterate mankind from the face of the earth.
There are far too many unanswered questions about Mururoa and Fangataufa questions that only an
internationally acceptable scientific
team with an unfettered access to raw data and site inspections of both Mururoa and Fangataufa can satisfacto
rily answer.
If French nuclear tests are safe, why does Paris enter “reservation” when it signed the South Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) Convention? Entering reservations effectively means that France will not be held responsible for any environmental disaster in the South Pacific both now and in the future, even in the event of accidental discharge of radioactive wastes into the Pacific ocean If France is truly sincere about its claim that its nuclear testing programme on Mururoa and Fangataufa is safe, then this should be cleared once and for all.
The South Pacific Environment Ministers who met in Brisbane recently proposed a number of steps that France need to take to clear its name and to restore its relations with countries in the Pacific.
They want President Chirac to revoke the decision to resume nuclear testing and to sign the protocols to the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, com monly known as the Treaty of Rarotonga. If France had given such support to similar nuclear treaties in Latin America and Africa, why not the
Spnzf?
As well, they called for the perma nent closure of Mururoa and Fangataufa and that France make available all data on previous testing, with a guarantee of unfettered access for scientists to data and the test sites and to undertake long term monitoring open to scrutiny.
The South Pacific Ministers have also called on President Chirac to demonstrate France’s commitment as a responsible and constructive partner in the South Pacific by declaring that “the French Government accepts full and
exclusive responsibility, including for
such remediation or compensation as may be necessary, for any adverse impacts, past, present or future, from nuclear testing on the environment and health of the peoples of the South Pacific”. A