There is renewed alarm in French Polynesia over the legacy of the French nuclear weapons tests.
Picture taken in 1971, showing a nuclear explosion in Mururoa atoll. Photo: AFP
Last week's release of a new study led to fresh accusations that the French authorities misled the public about the seriousness of the test fallout.
An independent French outfit, the news website Disclose, released an analysis of declassified French documents, concluding that the fallout of a 1974 atmospheric test affected the entire population and not only the immediate testing zone around Morurua.
The researchers found that in some cases the impact was up to 10 times higher than previously established.
This information came just weeks after the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research said evidence from French Polynesia didn't allow to conclude that the atmospheric tests caused illnesses, such as cancers.
For test veteran groups, the latest findings by Disclose confirmed that France had been economical with the truth.
At the heart of their campaign is the push for compensation, which has been a decade-long battle over measured and measurable fallout.
The Disclose assessment, if accepted, would make thousands more sick people eligible for compensation, and incur on France an obligation to pay out hundreds of millions of dollars.
The pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru said he denounced the tests all along and claims that the Disclose study proves that contamination extended to all inhabited islands as well as to other Pacific countries.
According to him, the test legacy should be raised by the Pacific Islands Forum.
Oscar Temaru and Tavini Huiraatira's Gaston Flosse. Photo: RNZ Pacific / AFP
Temaru furthermore pointed to the UN resolution of 2013 which put French Polynesia on the decolonisation list.
He argued that France had to report to the UN about the health and environmental impact of its 193 nuclear weapons tests.
Temaru accused France of duplicity in the way it dealt with French Polynesia and also took a swipe at the territory's rival political side, which defended the tests.
A former president Gaston Flosse admitted he travelled the Pacific to reassure the region of the tests' safety, but said he would now oppose the tests with physical force if he had known what price the territory had to pay.
In a statement, Flosse said on one hand that if the Disclose study was correct then France lied to French Polynesians for years.
On the other hand, he said France must re-examine all compensation claims that have been rejected, and should also scrap the compensation law because its very basis no longer existed.
The French Atomic Energy Commission, the French defence minister and the French High Commissioner in French Polynesia have largely dismissed the Disclose study.
In essence, they saw no new elements or said the existing studies had taken all relevant information into account.
The French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch expressed surprise at the virulent reaction in Tahiti.
However, nearly three years ago he told the assembly that he himself had been telling lies about the tests for decades.
For now, the French compensation commission will continue to pay compensation within the established framework, benefiting at best dozens of people.
Compensation is paid out of a sense of national solidarity not because the French state recognises any liability.
