There has been an outcry in French Polynesia over moves by the French National Assembly to slip a clause about compensation over nuclear weapons testing into Covid-19 legislation.
A French Polynesian member of the French Assembly Moetai Brotherson said it was a scandal that this was added into deliberations when French Polynesia’s members were away from Paris because of the pandemic.
The nuclear test veterans organisations, Moruroa e tatou and Association 193, also expressed outrage.
The French government wants to re-introduce the concept of neglible risk of the tests in compensation cases after a court ruling had done away with it.
Over a 30-year period of France’s weapons tests in the South Pacific some of the atmospheric blasts irradiated most islands.
Mr Brotherson said he had only just heard about the National Assembly move and wondered what the French Polynesian people had ever done to be so detested by the French state.
Hiro Tefaarere of Moruroa e tatou said he was outraged but not surprised about the way France was going about it.
He said all presidents, from de Gaulle to Macron, couldn’t care less about Polynesians, and although France was responsible for public health in Tahiti it failed to keep a register to see how many people died because of fallout from the weapons tests.
Auguste Uebe Carlson, who heads Association 193, said France kept refusing to recognise the impact of the tests, using instead propaganda to say they were clean or a thing of the past.
He said nothing was recognised, with health problems now being attributed to poor diet and life-style choices.
Last year, French Polynesia’s social security agency calculated that it had so far spent $US770 million on health care costs for people deemed to have radiation-induced illnesses.
