The ‘kon Tiki’ Man’s Fears

[Guest Tim]

THE ‘KON TIKI’ MAN’S FEARS

By Desmond Zwar

 

"Hundreds" of Polynesians had been killed by radioactivity from French nuclear tests, scientist and author Bengt Danielsson, who has lived in Tahiti since his Kon-Tiki raft landed there nearly 50 years ago, claims.

 

‘Most of them,’ he said, ‘have died from cancer.’

 

He said his young daughter, Marouia, who also died from cancer in 1972, was one of them. ‘She was only 20 when she died, and was exposed to radiation here as were all of us.

 

‘The French government detonated 200 bombs between 1966 and 1992,’ said Danielsson, now 74, ‘and in September they are going to do it again. For years, my wife, Marie-Therese, and I, have protested against the French testing nuclear weapons in the islands.

 

‘We have clearly indicated that testing nuclear devices is dangerous in this area. Throughout the 70s,80s, and 90s, French foreign ministers, governors, generals and admirals have all said these tests have not been dangerous. But all these Polynesians have been contaminated and have died. The French Government has consistently failed to publish statistics about health problems here. They always stress the tests are totally harmless.

 

‘If that is so, and they are not dangerous, then they should make the tests in metropolitan France and not here. My wife is in Papeete now joining the peoples’ protest.’

 

Danielsson said that figures published on the incidence of cancer in the islands were not a true picture of the disease. The French administration did not include patients treated by private doctors, bush "quacks", nor those military and civilian personnel treated at a special hospital on Mururoa; these statistics remained Top Secret.

 

The tall, bearded Swedish scientist was threatened with expulsion from Tahiti when he spoke out about French nuclear tests in the Pacific in 1978. General de Gaulle had granted him diplomatic status as Sweden’s honorary consul. But when he published a book Mururoa My Love, about the island where the tests took place, he was told he was guilty of "an unfriendly attitude" towards France, and was said to be "tarnishing" France’s image.

 

Danielsson sent off a protest to President Giscard d’Estaing, saying there was a "barely veiled threat to expel us from our adoptive country unless we keep our mouths shut in the future", and was stripped of his position as curator for the (then) planned Polynesian Museum.

 

Bengt Danielsson has been revered in Tahiti ever since he and his companions sailed on a flimsy raft from Peru in 1947 and landed on the nearby island of Raroia. He said to me:’I have written my book, Poison Reign, about French nuclear testing in the Pacific, telling the truth about the testing. The French edition came out in early 1992 and I believe it helped influence President Mitterand not to allow any more testing. It helped persuade him. He said that France had no enemies in Europe, and that no country would attack France. So why test atom bombs?’

 

Danielsson’s wife, Marie-Therese, has also pleaded for testing to end. She has said that French authorities have always been so adamant about witholding information on the effects of radioactive fallout that she believed more and more Tahitians were becoming convinced that the only way to stop the tests was Tahitian independence from France.

 

When the French testing began, prominent world figures protested. Dr.Albert Schweitzer wrote to Tahitian anti-bomb activists:

 

"I have been fighting against all nuclear weapons and nuclear tests since 1955. It is sad to learn that they have been forced on the inhabitants of your islands. Those who claim the tests are harmless, are liars. I have had a great pity for you ever since I first learned that the army had decided to use your Islands for testing their atomic bombs. Who could have imagined that France would be willing to deliver its own citizens to the military in this manner?"

 

Biologist Jean Rostand of the French Academy wrote :

 

"There does not exist a ‘threshold’ below which radiation is so feeble that it is no longer harmful. Every increase of the radioactive dose, however slight it may be, enhances the probability of mutation. More changes will take place in our genetic heritage and these variations are always, or practically always, unfavorable."

 

Theodore Monod, later to be awarded the Nobel Prize, said it was ‘an official lie’ that there was no radioactive pollution from the tests. "If these tests are as harmless as the government alleges, who does it not carry them out in Corsica, Landes, or Seine-et-Oise? Can the reason be that the government finds it easier to deceive the islanders than the metropolitan voters?"