Tahiti nuclear memorial to be removed

Transcript

Nuclear test veterans in French Polynesia say the government wants to take away their memorial in Tahiti and stop them from marking a day to remember victims.

The head of Moruroa e tatou, Roland Oldham, says the French Polynesian president, Gaston Flosse, has said the current memorial on the beach will be removed and a different memorial set up.

Mr Oldham says the intention is to stop veterans from gathering at the current memorial for a remembrance service in a couple of weeks.

He told Mary Baines hundreds of people are against the plan.

ROLAND OLDHAM: For us, it is a violation of the right first of the victim. It is also a violation of the right to our history. The way he is doing that is without any talk to us, he just decides to suppress this memorial.

MARY BAINES: So he's saying that your organisation can't meet at the memorial on July 2nd?

RO: That's what they are trying to do. Because every second of July we have this ceremony, a day to remember. And it sounds like the way he's doing now, he's just kicking us out. The ceremony is not to happen. We just cannot accept it. There has been 30 years of nuclear tests in our country, and there has been a lot of people suffering and there's a lot of sickness, cancer, due to the nuclear test. Him coming to power, just trying to wipe out all the work that our organisation has done for many years. And to us it's just not acceptable. And today we are calling on the people to react. And this place, this memorial, is well known internationally. We have stones on this memorial that came from Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Algeria, from the places there have been nuclear tests. And this decision that he has taken to suppress that like that to me just is not acceptable at all.

MB: So he's actually said he wants to take out that memorial, take it away?

RO: For the moment, he just suppresses. And then he wrote us a letter saying he is going to send it somewhere else. But it doesn't work like that, I don't think a memorial is a bag of dirty clothes that you can kick from one side to the other. I mean, it doesn't happen like that. I mean there's a lack of respect to the victims and to the families of the victims, to the Polynesian people as far as I'm concerned.

MB: Where does he want to put this memorial?

RO: He wants to put it somewhere in the middle of the street at the other end of the city. And our reaction is to stop that. We cannot understand this attitude that he has against our organisation. I mean it's the only place in this country to remind there has been nuclear tests in this country. Otherwise if you come in this country, you don't know the story of French Polynesia, you won't even know that there has been nuclear tests. To us, this place is so important especially for the new generation. It's part of our history now. The victims are still battling to have compensation and instead of helping the Polynesian victims this president Gaston Flosse is just kicking us in the mouth.