Thirty years after the last French nuclear tests, cancer is common in Tahiti

• 

  Meike Wijers

  Australian Journalist

Images of the beautiful islands of French Polynesia, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, are broadcast around the world during the Olympic Games. The surfing final will take place in Tahiti today.

But France’s overseas country also has a dark history. French nuclear tests exposed almost the entire population to dangerous radioactive materials. Now, nearly thirty years later, there may be a new parliamentary inquiry into the consequences.

Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross (35) is one of the thousands of victims of the nuclear program. At the age of twenty-four she was diagnosed with leukemia. She is yet another woman in her family who is sick. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, aunt and sister also have cancer.

In this video she tells her story:

She is sitting on the porch of her grandparents’ house in the coastal town of Mateia on the island of Tahiti. This is where she spent her childhood. “At that time I didn’t know anything about the nuclear tests that France did here, we never talked about them. I thought they were innocent tests, about four or five.”

In fact, France conducted 193 nuclear tests in French Polynesia over thirty years. After intense international pressure, the program ended in 1996, years after other Western countries had stopped nuclear testing.

France was one of the last countries in the West to join the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, an international agreement that prohibits nuclear weapons tests.

During the first test period in French Polynesia, from 1966 to 1974, France conducted the tests above ground. The entire population of Tahiti, the most populous island in French Polynesia, was exposed to dangerous nuclear radiation. Later the experiments were conducted underground.

It is not surprising that Morgant-Cross did not know for a long time the extent of the nuclear testing program. The French government has not been open about the nuclear tests and the radiation levels that resulted in those years. The message was that the nuclear tests were safe.

“People believed, even though they knew about nuclear tests by the United States, among others, in the Marshall Islands, that the consequences were catastrophic,” said Morgant-Cross, who has been in the parliament of French Polynesia from 2023.

At first, the local population was happy with the arrival of the nuclear program, because it created a lot of work and money. France invested in the region, causing wealth to grow rapidly. “We were enthusiastic about the nuclear tests, but we were lying,” said Joel Hoiore of the interest group Moruroa e Tatou, which fights for victims.

And that is necessary. Various forms of cancer are very common here. In total, 23 types of cancer are caused by nuclear radiation. It is not known for sure how many people are sick or have died as a result of the nuclear tests. “France has deliberately not kept up with this,” says Hoiore.

In addition to the inhabitants of the islands, 2,000 French soldiers stationed here during the nuclear tests have also developed at least one form of cancer.

In 2021 research showed by a French group of investigative journalists that the inhabitants of the island of Tahiti had been exposed to 500 times the dose of radiation that a person can tolerate. But the people were hardly warned about the dangers.

That same year, President Macron said during his visit to French Polynesia that France was responsible for the consequences of the nuclear tests. “I don’t think we would have done the same tests in Brittany, for example. We did it here because it was further away,” said Macron. An official apology however, it did not materialize.

There has been a compensation scheme since 2010, but the application procedure is complex. Moruroa e Tatou helps victims who want to claim this. “Many people do not start because they have to fill out so many papers to prove that they are victims. The bureaucratic problem hinders them,” said Hoiore.

Morgant-Cross also makes no attempt to obtain compensation. “I will be sick for the rest of my life, there is no price to pay for that,” she says. She entered politics to fight for recognition. She wants France to pay for expensive health care so that sick people in French Polynesia can be helped. Many patients now have to go abroad for treatment.

She does not have much expectation of the new parliamentary investigation that may exist. “After France lied to us for years, I no longer trust investigations by the French government,” she said.

She works with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), a global initiative that aims to eliminate nuclear weapons. She hopes that there will eventually be an independent international investigation.