DEMOCRACY NOW
This week, the second Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons took place at the United Nations here in New York, bringing together survivors of nuclear testing from around the world. Today we’re joined by two of them.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is a parliamentarian in French Polynesia, a former French colony in the southern Pacific Ocean that served as a testing ground for France’s nuclear experiments. Her own leukemia is a legacy of the 193 French atomic tests in the South Pacific, motivating her activism to ensure the stories of the victims are remembered and to pressure the French government to accept responsibility and to provide medical and financial support. She led the successful passage of a vote in September in the Assembly of French Polynesia, a department of France, to support the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The resolution urges France to attend future meetings of states parties as an observer. She’s also one of three 2023 laureates of the Nuclear-Free Future Awards, which were given this week in New York.
Also with us is her fellow Nuclear-Free Future Award winner, Benetick Kabua Maddison, a U.S.-based Mashallese activist whose work focuses on the legacy of the U.S. atomic tests conducted in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, and the ongoing health, environmental and cultural consequences. He’s executive director of the Marshallese Educational Initiative based in Springdale, Arkansas.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re going to begin with Benetick. You were born in the Marshall Islands. For you, this story encompasses your life and your family’s life, your country’s life, the Marshall Islands. But for others around the world, they may not at all be familiar what happened in the Marshall Islands. Can you talk about these U.S. nuclear tests? When did they happen? Who did they affect? What happened to the Marshallese people?
BENETICK KABUA MADDISON: Thank you, Amy.
So, the Marshall Islands, where I’m from, were actually used by the U.S. for nuclear weapons testing. The United States tested about 67 large-scale atomic and thermonuclear weapons on Bikini and Enewetak atolls, which are located in the northern part of the Marshalls. Sixty-seven is equivalent to about 7,200 Hiroshima bombs. And as a consequence, we are still dealing with health issues such as cancer. These are leukemia, liver, stomach, thyroid. My country is still dealing with birth defects. And then, of course, diabetes and heart disease. In fact, we have some of the highest rates of diabetes in the world in the Marshall Islands because of the destruction of our lands, lands that people have depended on for centuries to survive. And now we’re having to depend on food that’s imported from the outside world, which is contributing to diabetes and other chronic illnesses that, unfortunately, are killing my people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, can you go — still go back in time and talk about how did the U.S. drop nuclear bombs on the Marshall Islands?
BENETICK KABUA MADDISON: So, it’s important to note that after the United States had pushed out the Japanese out of the Marshall Islands, given that the Marshalls were actually under Japan from 1919 up until 1944, and so it became under the U.S. Navy’s responsibility after the war, which made it easy for the United States to utilize the islands for nuclear weapons testing. And know that these testing were done underground, underwater and above ground.
AMY GOODMAN: And what kind of bombs were dropped or exploded?
BENETICK KABUA MADDISON: These were atomic and hydrogen bombs.
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AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross into this conversation. She’s currently a parliamentarian in French Polynesia, and she herself is dealing with leukemia, a legacy of the atomic testing on her islands of French Polynesia. Hina, thanks so much for being with us. Congratulations on your Nuclear-Free Futures Award this week in New York as you attend this meeting at the United Nations. But give us a history lesson. What happened to French Polynesia?
HINAMOEURA MORGANT-CROSS: Thank you. We have been chose by France after the nuclear test in Algeria that had to stop because of the war and Algeria asking their independence. The French were looking for another territory to continue the test. And they chose us because we were one of her — its colony in the Pacific Ocean. So, my people and my land has been chose as a territory of the new nuclear bomb testing of France. And it started in 1966. We didn’t have the choice. It was be imposed to my people. And it ended in 1996. So we had the 193 nuclear bombs on the atoll of Mururoa and Fangataufa. And the nearest island with population was only 100 kilometer to where the bombs were testing.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about what the people of French Polynesia were told, and why you think your leukemia is linked to what France did with these 193 tests on your islands.
HINAMOEURA MORGANT-CROSS: The French state has a very, very important propaganda on our country, on our people. And they always said that — because some of people already knew, despite the fact that we are very far from the world, already knew because of Hiroshima that there was like a disease after a nuclear bomb test. And so, they asked for question to the French government, and the sentence and the message of French government was, “OK, the other nuclear tests are not clean, but the French tests are very clean. Don’t worry. Don’t” — we had also, like, a psychologist helped to make us think that the nuclear bomb is clean with the French tests. So, today, it’s very complex for me to continue the activism, because many of people, they still think that our disease is not linked from the nuclear test, because they still, like — I always say, like, to be an activist, you have to decolonize your mind. It’s why we can’t separate our colonial history to our nuclear history, because we have a colonized mind. Also, we feel like inferior as the French, like if the French say it’s clean, so it’s clean. We are also a little bit candid.
And I realize that maybe my — that my leukemia was a French heritage, legacy, because in my family, every woman had cancer, from my grandma to me, have thyroid problem, breast cancer. And it’s also when I had the — when I met the older affected communities that I realized that we are far from each other, but we have the same sad history about, because we were the territory of nuclear bomb testing. And we today have the same consequences, all the disease, the illness, the problem that Marshall Island had. We have the same in my country.
AMY GOODMAN: There are about, what, 130 islands in the five archipelagos that make up French Polynesia. How many of these islands were bombed or were bombs set off next to them?
HINAMOEURA MORGANT-CROSS: They used two islands for the nuclear test, Fangataufa and Mururoa. We had some bomb in the atmosphere, I think 46. And because of all the international community that were saying that atmospheric is very bad for the environment, they decided to do the other tests in the ground.
But what I want to say, like, in the ground in a desert, it’s just in the desert. But in the ground in the Pacific Ocean in an island, it’s in the ocean. And our ocean is where we find food. We don’t have cows. In my country, I can eat fish, morning, for the lunch and for the dinner. So I really feel that by saying, “Oh, it was only in the ground. It’s OK. There’s not very a lot of pollution,” no, it wasn’t, because they pollute our lagoon where we found our food.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Hina, what caused France to stop bombing French Polynesia?
HINAMOEURA MORGANT-CROSS: I think we can thank the international community, all the activists that came in Tahiti to fight against that. And I really think it’s because of the international community that it stopped.
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