Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

Anger at Paris plan to make Moruroa site of pride

Posted at 04:18 on 02 November, 2009 UTC

The Moruroa e Tatou nuclear test veterans association is upset at a plan by the French President Nicolas Sarkozy to designate the French Polynesian atolls of Moruroa and Hao as sites of remembrance and territorial pride.

In a statement, the association says this amounts to a provocation thrown at all the victims of the French nuclear weapons tests.

It says after 30 years of misdeeds, France’s highest institution now wants to instill in the heads of Polynesians that they should be proud to be sacrificed in the name of the national defence which refused to test its bombs in France.

The French initiative to designate such overseas sites was launched in February when the French Caribbean was in the grip of severe social unrest.