'The trouble is that more evidence is leaking out that the French tests did dirty large areas of French Polynesia with fallout because the military and scientific readings stuffed up wind forecasts...'


A reported remark by a French defence official that the inhabitants of French Polynesia should be “less passionate” when discussing whether or not they were contaminated by the nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa is rich, to say the least.

So is an admission by him that during the 1966-1996 tests, when France's Polynesians became suspicious that they weren't being told the truth about the extent of the fallout from the tests that “some things were not said at the time”.

The French government position was and still is that the tests were harmless. Talks of high rates of such fatal ailments as thyroid cancer, leukemia and congenital malformations are all nonsense and not at all connected with radioactive fallout, it says.

France had and has good reasons for taking this position. It doesn't wish to risk exposing itself to claims for hundreds of millions of dollars compensation from people who can prove that they were harmed by the tests. Nor does it wish to be draped with the sick image that the United States earned for itself in trying to obscure the extent of radiation sickness inflicted on the people of the Marshall Islands by its atmospheric hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini and some other atolls.

The trouble is that more evidence is leaking out that the French tests did dirty large areas of French Polynesia with fallout because the military and scientific readings stuffed up wind forecasts so badly that a number of inhabited atolls were invisibly drenched with death in the form of radioactive fallout.

A 300-page official report that admitted that deadly pollution happened was due to be officially published in February. The contents got leaked to French Polynesia's media in January.

The report by the French Atomic Energy Commission said its inquiries ran into difficulties by the refusal of the defence ministry to co-operate. How pig-headed! If the war ministry continues to lie and dodge around the issue, then anything and everything else stated by it should be read as lies.

Marcel Jurien de la Graviere, an envoy from the war ministry, appeared in Papeete in February on what he said was a “truth” mission. After talking to local politicians and other questioners and critics of the nuclear tests, he had detected “a real desire for information” about what “really happened.” How hilarious. The truth, according to the war ministry, was that the tests were harmless even though “some things were not said” when they were happening. Goodness gracious!

Here are a couple of other astounding quotes from a television interview he gave-

• “I don't believe things have been hidden at the time. I would rather think that they had not been said (because they were too secret to disclose-wasn't that hiding secrets?”
• After the war ministry had read the 300-page report, he would return to Papeete on April 18 to “officially” admit that more nuclear tests than initially said, have in fact had “significant repercussions” on the local people.
• Mr de la Graviere's reported comments indicated that when they were officially told of how badly contaminated they were, France's half-cooked Polynesians won't want to talk about the matter because “it is not favourable to serene economic development.”

All the above reads like a chapter from Alice in Wonderland or a trick riddle.