"This South Pacific archipelago, a French overseas territory that includes Tahiti and is famed for its white beaches, swaying palms, and turquoise waters, is often romanticized as a paradise. But beneath the idyllic image lies a painful legacy: decades of nuclear testing and its enduring consequences. Between 1966 and 1996, the French military detonated 193 nuclear bombs on the remote atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa. These tests were carried out in Ma'ohi Nui, as the territory is known to its indigenous inhabitants."
"In 2025, Morgant-Cross journeyed over 15,000 kilometers (more than 9,320 miles) to Berlin to speak at an event in May, hosted by the international medical NGO International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, or IPPNW. There, she delivered a searing testimony about the long-term consequences of France's nuclear testing program: disproportionately high cancer rates, children born with deformities and ongoing contamination of the region's water and soil."
""So they really poisoned the ocean where we found all our food," says Morgant-Cross who has also addressed the United Nations in New York. "We have been poisoned for the greatness of France, for France to be a state with a nuclear weapon.""
Between 1966 and 1996, the French military detonated 193 nuclear bombs on the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in Ma'ohi Nui. The first test, codenamed Aldebaran, occurred on July 2, 1966. The detonations produced long-term contamination of land, water and marine ecosystems. Local populations experienced disproportionately high cancer rates and children born with deformities. Political leaders gave assurances that the weapons were safe, with then-President Charles de Gaulle describing the atomic bomb as 'green and very clean.' Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross, a member of the French Polynesian parliament, has testified internationally about ongoing contamination and received the Nuclear-Free Future Award in 2023.
Read at www.dw.com
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