BORMANN: Its the idyllic land painted by Gauguin a place where mutineers of the Bounty sought refuge. The early Europeans spoke of a beautiful people in a permissive paradise. The colonials stayed and today Tahiti and the rest of French Polynesia is more European than ever, and if theres any doubt about the clutch of the motherland, France says this sprawling island group of one quarter of a million people is no longer just an overseas territory, but what it calls an overseas country of the French republic.
France says it cant thank Polynesia enough for something it did to this place in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
Music
BORMANN: But now theres seismic shift of another kind. The former workers of the nuclear testing program at Moruroa are speaking out like never before and what they have to say the French Government would rather not hear.
ROLAND OLDHAM: What the French Government have done to my people is something that is hard to forgive.
Singing
BORMANN: On the island of Tahaa villagers greet the first new President of French Polynesia for twenty years. Oscar Temarus narrow election victory marks a profound change from former governments loyal to Paris and compliant. Not content with the level of autonomy his people have with France, he wants full independence.
BORMANN: Most people call this place French Polynesia, what do you call it?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: This is French-occupied Polynesia -- that is the truth. This country has been occupied. There has been war between our ancestors.
BORMANN: The rhetoric of the new President surprises even his most radical followers, but Oscar Temaru has another agenda. This one resonates with the thousands of Polynesians who helped France develop the bomb.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I know what happened on the atoll of Moruroa. I was one of the first people who went there.
BORMANN: The Cold War and the Pacific was the worlds nuclear playground. Ground Zero for the Americans was the Marshall Islands. They vaporised several atolls and later admitted to irradiating hundreds of villages.
NEWSREADER (ARCHIVE): The French exploded their third hydrogen device on the atmosphere. The blast occurred in the South Pacific above Moruroa atoll in the French Polynesia.
BORMANN: Not to be outdone in its nuclear ambitions, the French settled on the atolls of Moruroa and nearby Fangataufa. From 1966, they detonated forty six atomic bombs above ground and one hundred and forty seven below.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I used to work as a civil servant in the customs administration to control all those cargoes that use to come from France. We have seen banners in the atolls, and it was written in red in big, colour this zone is very contaminated. Dont fish here any more. And we have seen all that, of signs everywhere. And from, that was the time I started to say Oh what you doing here? They are contaminating your country.
BORMANN: When France announced in 1995 it would resume testing, Oscar Temaru was already his peoples leading anti-nuclear activist.
Martin: What form is that protest taking?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well we are preparing the biggest rally ever organised in this country for maybe sometime next week.
BORMANN: The streets erupted in violence as French Police fought with Tahitian demonstrators. At night ,the capital, Papeete, burned. The tests were to last only a few months in the face of worldwide condemnation.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I am a Mahori of this country. I have my first duty is to protect my people and the future generation, so I started to speak up from then. It was not very easy. I thank God every day because I am still alive.
ROLAND OLDHAM: Today, most of the people that have worked on Moruroa have a similar sort of health problem and because the doctor cannot explain to them exactly what they have, these people are convinced that the problem
that they have comes from the fact that they have worked at a nuclear site.
BORMANN: Roland Oldham is neither a doctor nor a scientist but hes convinced that thousands of civilian workers at Moruroa were exposed to radiation and are suffering the consequences. He heads an association of three thousand former workers. Theyre dying at an average age of fifty one years.
On this day hes visiting Raymond Pia whose job it was to work in the shafts where bombs were placed. Local contractors like Mr Pia did most of the menial work. Hes since suffered testicular cancer and is in poor health.
RAYMOND PIA: There were places where we were not allowed to go. That means those places were contaminated, so why are they lying and saying its clean? Its not. The atomic bomb is not clean -- its contaminated and its filthy.
BORMANN: The association of former Moruroa workers has been asked by the new President to set up a register of those who spent time on the atoll. It seems an impossible task. All records connected with the testing programme have been classified as secret by the French. The workers themselves have been muzzled.
ROLAND OLDHAM: When you start working in Moruroa, like most of the workers there, you have to sign a contract saying that it is very important act that you are doing in Moruroa and it is a matter of secret defence.
Music
BORMANN: If ever there was a symbol of colonial pride in French Polynesia this is it. The new Presidential Palace. Oscar Temaru has moved in, but it was built by the man the new President turfed out.
For two decades, Gaston Flosse was more like a king than a president, a close friend and political fundraiser for French President Jacques Chirac, and the man also who welcomed the testing programme and the investment that came with it.
Music
SENATOR FLOSSE: Ive often said, and I say it again today, if there had been the slightest doubt about the safety of the French nuclear experiments, I would have been the first to ask France to stop them.
BORMANN: In a place so dependent upon France for its economic existence, political patronage here means everything. In the past those whove agitated over the Moruroa issue claim theyve been isolated and harassed. Roland Oldham says he was sacked three times from public service jobs.
ROLAND OLDHAM: Well, a lot of people have been scared for many years. Even today, a lot of people are not speaking freely.
BORMANN: Many people in French Polynesia have told us they feel intimidated about talking about this, intimidated by you.
SENATOR FLOSSE: Ive never brought any pressure to bear on anyone about this issue -- or for that matter, about any other issue. This is a democratic country and we have total freedom of expression.
BORMANN: Dr Gilles Soubiran is one medico who is speaking out. He believes workers engaged in especially the above ground tests may have suffered radiation poisoning but their official cause of death will never be noted.
DR GILLES SOUBIRAN: So were talking about people who may have died in their eighties, and at that time the health system in Polynesia was not sufficiently developed to verify whether they died of acute leukaemia.
BORMANN: As Jacques Chirac was celebrating Bastille day with his people, the new President of French Polynesia was on his way to Paris to present his credentials.
WILLIAMS: How does it feel to be back as President of your country?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes thats different. Thats different.
BORMANN: Normally this would be a red carpet event, but Oscar Temaru was about to find out that Jacques Chirac didnt want to know about him.
WILLIAMS: Can I ask you sir, how do you feel about not meeting President Chirac?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well were still waiting for the reply from his Secretary. Havent got it yet. Maybe hes scared to meet me . I dont know.
BORMANN: Well why didnt he want to see you?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I dont know.
BORMANN: It was a monumental presidential snub, but hardly a surprising rebuff for the man who wants to take the French out of French Polynesia. Oscar Temaru was here to demand compensation for the workers of Moruroa. All he got was a predictable refrain from Overseas Minister Brigitte Giardin.
BRIGITTE GIARDIN: We are not hiding anything at all on this matter. Our tests were always carried out in safe conditions for the health of the population, and if any link is to be established it will be done in an absolutely transparent way.
BORMANN: The French Government position is simple -- there was no human exposure to radiation, therefore there can be no attributable sickness and no basis for legal claims. As the new President toured a hospice for sick compatriots, it was becoming clear that his mission would not be easy.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Doctors still have to find out proof -- relations between the French nuclear testing and the diseases -- and thats very hard to do.
Music
BORMANN: The political fallout of the nuclear testing programme swept France long before Oscar Temaru began to agitate here. In the city of Lyon, doctors and French military veterans have mobilised to try to find any connection between service and sickness.
Its not publicly known how many French military personnel served in Moruroa but its thought to be about five thousand. Doctor Jean-Louis Valatx surveyed nine hundred veterans and found they suffered twice the incidence of cancer as other men. His study also found high rates of birth defects in the children of veterans.
DR VALATX: Yes, indeed there are veterans who have been instructed not to have children within the five or ten years following the test, but that was said orally. Nobody, no military doctor, dared to put this down on paper. But indeed, some veterans did not take any notice. So what shocks me the most is the refusal to accept the current medical and scientific evidence by neither the government nor the military doctors.
BORMANN: The French veterans are preparing a landmark legal challenge they hope will open the door for other claims. Michel Desfointaine will be one of the first to sue. Hes partially blind, a legacy he says of his role in the test programme. Mr Desfontaine swam in lagoons that contained the runoff of aircraft washed after flying through radioactive cloud.
MICHEL DESFONTAINE: What I ask is for recognition for services rendered for France, for the nation. And we are claming compensation of course --but the main thing we want is moral compensation.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: This is a very sacred place.
This is the place where we used to sacrifice human sacrifice.
BORMANN: Undaunted by the brush off on his first Presidential trip to Paris, Oscar Temarus back home and calling on his people to embrace their spiritual past.
The marae is a traditional place of worship for Polynesians, but as much as Oscar Temaru looks to the ancient past for enlightenment, hes reminded of unfinished business in his countrys more recent history. The French Government has told him that any former Moruroa worker will be able to receive social security benefits if theyre sick, but proving the connection is still the difficulty.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: The hospital used to be controlled by the army. Thats a big problem.
BORMANN: Do those records exist or have they disappeared?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: They have disappeared. Its secret defence.
BORMANN: Theyre still under lock and key somewhere?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes, yes.
BORMANN: So do you as President expect to have a chance to get that key and open it?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well try our best.
Music
BORMANN: French Polynesias first study into the health of its people is likely to be stymied through lack of information before it gets off the ground. Theres concerted political opposition here as well. Senator Gaston Flosse, the President of twenty years, used to swim in that lagoon of Moruroa to demonstrate it was safe.
Now he wishes the whole issue would go away.Senator Flosse, you have worked very hard for French Polynesia.
SENATOR FLOSSE: Oh come on! Well stop right here, theres no point in carrying on. I didnt come here to talk about nuclear tests.
BORMANN: Sir, there are some other questions Id like to ask you if possible.
SENATOR FLOSSE: They just want to talk about -- nuclear tests and victims of radiation. Weve wasted almost half an hour just on these things. If Id known it was abut these issues, I would have refused to do this interview.
BORMANN: Its an entrenched belief in traditional Polynesian society that to hurt the land is to harm the people. Roland Oldhams organisation is made up of thousands of men who claim theyre victims of a momentous event that shook the land again and again. Now they want a new untested President to be their advocate.
ROLAND OLDHAM: We do hope that in the future, with a new government, we may have some open door to come across the truth.
BORMANN: Do you think theres a chance that now that hes President that things will change and that he will become a politician and forget where he came from?
ROLAND OLDHAM: Well it would be sad for him if he forgets where he comes from, I dont believe thats going to be the case. I do believe that his struggle, his engagement in issues of independence like in nuclear issue is something that comes strongly from deep inside the guy.
BORMANN: The new President wants his country to be independence from France in ten to fifteen years. In the meantime, theres the Moruroa campaign to run and its personal for a reason he doesnt often talk about.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes we lost one of our sons, he was -- my wife was seven months pregnant and we lost the second one. He was handicapped. He was seventeen years old and you have all those problems in every family.
BORMANN: And hows your own health?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well I can say Im still alright, still alright.
Singing
BORMANN: The multinational nuclear testing ground that was the South Pacific has produced a generation of victims unable to explain their afflictions. No one even knows how many sick there are anyway. In French Polynesia, the crusading anti-nuclear leader turned President is only a flimsy hold on power and hostile relations with mother France.
The civilian and military workers of the early above ground testing are ailing and aging and in a country with the highest rate of thyroid cancer in the world, a culture of silence is keeping a lid on happenings of what the Polynesians call the place of the big secret.
Reporter: Trevor Bormann
Camera: Geoffrey Lye, John Benes, Terry Palmer
Sound: Kate McCure
Editor: Garth Thomas
Research: Anna Bracks
France says it cant thank Polynesia enough for something it did to this place in the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s.
Music
BORMANN: But now theres seismic shift of another kind. The former workers of the nuclear testing program at Moruroa are speaking out like never before and what they have to say the French Government would rather not hear.
ROLAND OLDHAM: What the French Government have done to my people is something that is hard to forgive.
Singing
BORMANN: On the island of Tahaa villagers greet the first new President of French Polynesia for twenty years. Oscar Temarus narrow election victory marks a profound change from former governments loyal to Paris and compliant. Not content with the level of autonomy his people have with France, he wants full independence.
BORMANN: Most people call this place French Polynesia, what do you call it?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: This is French-occupied Polynesia -- that is the truth. This country has been occupied. There has been war between our ancestors.
BORMANN: The rhetoric of the new President surprises even his most radical followers, but Oscar Temaru has another agenda. This one resonates with the thousands of Polynesians who helped France develop the bomb.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I know what happened on the atoll of Moruroa. I was one of the first people who went there.
BORMANN: The Cold War and the Pacific was the worlds nuclear playground. Ground Zero for the Americans was the Marshall Islands. They vaporised several atolls and later admitted to irradiating hundreds of villages.
NEWSREADER (ARCHIVE): The French exploded their third hydrogen device on the atmosphere. The blast occurred in the South Pacific above Moruroa atoll in the French Polynesia.
BORMANN: Not to be outdone in its nuclear ambitions, the French settled on the atolls of Moruroa and nearby Fangataufa. From 1966, they detonated forty six atomic bombs above ground and one hundred and forty seven below.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I used to work as a civil servant in the customs administration to control all those cargoes that use to come from France. We have seen banners in the atolls, and it was written in red in big, colour this zone is very contaminated. Dont fish here any more. And we have seen all that, of signs everywhere. And from, that was the time I started to say Oh what you doing here? They are contaminating your country.
BORMANN: When France announced in 1995 it would resume testing, Oscar Temaru was already his peoples leading anti-nuclear activist.
Martin: What form is that protest taking?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well we are preparing the biggest rally ever organised in this country for maybe sometime next week.
BORMANN: The streets erupted in violence as French Police fought with Tahitian demonstrators. At night ,the capital, Papeete, burned. The tests were to last only a few months in the face of worldwide condemnation.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I am a Mahori of this country. I have my first duty is to protect my people and the future generation, so I started to speak up from then. It was not very easy. I thank God every day because I am still alive.
ROLAND OLDHAM: Today, most of the people that have worked on Moruroa have a similar sort of health problem and because the doctor cannot explain to them exactly what they have, these people are convinced that the problem
that they have comes from the fact that they have worked at a nuclear site.
BORMANN: Roland Oldham is neither a doctor nor a scientist but hes convinced that thousands of civilian workers at Moruroa were exposed to radiation and are suffering the consequences. He heads an association of three thousand former workers. Theyre dying at an average age of fifty one years.
On this day hes visiting Raymond Pia whose job it was to work in the shafts where bombs were placed. Local contractors like Mr Pia did most of the menial work. Hes since suffered testicular cancer and is in poor health.
RAYMOND PIA: There were places where we were not allowed to go. That means those places were contaminated, so why are they lying and saying its clean? Its not. The atomic bomb is not clean -- its contaminated and its filthy.
BORMANN: The association of former Moruroa workers has been asked by the new President to set up a register of those who spent time on the atoll. It seems an impossible task. All records connected with the testing programme have been classified as secret by the French. The workers themselves have been muzzled.
ROLAND OLDHAM: When you start working in Moruroa, like most of the workers there, you have to sign a contract saying that it is very important act that you are doing in Moruroa and it is a matter of secret defence.
Music
BORMANN: If ever there was a symbol of colonial pride in French Polynesia this is it. The new Presidential Palace. Oscar Temaru has moved in, but it was built by the man the new President turfed out.
For two decades, Gaston Flosse was more like a king than a president, a close friend and political fundraiser for French President Jacques Chirac, and the man also who welcomed the testing programme and the investment that came with it.
Music
SENATOR FLOSSE: Ive often said, and I say it again today, if there had been the slightest doubt about the safety of the French nuclear experiments, I would have been the first to ask France to stop them.
BORMANN: In a place so dependent upon France for its economic existence, political patronage here means everything. In the past those whove agitated over the Moruroa issue claim theyve been isolated and harassed. Roland Oldham says he was sacked three times from public service jobs.
ROLAND OLDHAM: Well, a lot of people have been scared for many years. Even today, a lot of people are not speaking freely.
BORMANN: Many people in French Polynesia have told us they feel intimidated about talking about this, intimidated by you.
SENATOR FLOSSE: Ive never brought any pressure to bear on anyone about this issue -- or for that matter, about any other issue. This is a democratic country and we have total freedom of expression.
BORMANN: Dr Gilles Soubiran is one medico who is speaking out. He believes workers engaged in especially the above ground tests may have suffered radiation poisoning but their official cause of death will never be noted.
DR GILLES SOUBIRAN: So were talking about people who may have died in their eighties, and at that time the health system in Polynesia was not sufficiently developed to verify whether they died of acute leukaemia.
BORMANN: As Jacques Chirac was celebrating Bastille day with his people, the new President of French Polynesia was on his way to Paris to present his credentials.
WILLIAMS: How does it feel to be back as President of your country?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes thats different. Thats different.
BORMANN: Normally this would be a red carpet event, but Oscar Temaru was about to find out that Jacques Chirac didnt want to know about him.
WILLIAMS: Can I ask you sir, how do you feel about not meeting President Chirac?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well were still waiting for the reply from his Secretary. Havent got it yet. Maybe hes scared to meet me . I dont know.
BORMANN: Well why didnt he want to see you?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: I dont know.
BORMANN: It was a monumental presidential snub, but hardly a surprising rebuff for the man who wants to take the French out of French Polynesia. Oscar Temaru was here to demand compensation for the workers of Moruroa. All he got was a predictable refrain from Overseas Minister Brigitte Giardin.
BRIGITTE GIARDIN: We are not hiding anything at all on this matter. Our tests were always carried out in safe conditions for the health of the population, and if any link is to be established it will be done in an absolutely transparent way.
BORMANN: The French Government position is simple -- there was no human exposure to radiation, therefore there can be no attributable sickness and no basis for legal claims. As the new President toured a hospice for sick compatriots, it was becoming clear that his mission would not be easy.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Doctors still have to find out proof -- relations between the French nuclear testing and the diseases -- and thats very hard to do.
Music
BORMANN: The political fallout of the nuclear testing programme swept France long before Oscar Temaru began to agitate here. In the city of Lyon, doctors and French military veterans have mobilised to try to find any connection between service and sickness.
Its not publicly known how many French military personnel served in Moruroa but its thought to be about five thousand. Doctor Jean-Louis Valatx surveyed nine hundred veterans and found they suffered twice the incidence of cancer as other men. His study also found high rates of birth defects in the children of veterans.
DR VALATX: Yes, indeed there are veterans who have been instructed not to have children within the five or ten years following the test, but that was said orally. Nobody, no military doctor, dared to put this down on paper. But indeed, some veterans did not take any notice. So what shocks me the most is the refusal to accept the current medical and scientific evidence by neither the government nor the military doctors.
BORMANN: The French veterans are preparing a landmark legal challenge they hope will open the door for other claims. Michel Desfointaine will be one of the first to sue. Hes partially blind, a legacy he says of his role in the test programme. Mr Desfontaine swam in lagoons that contained the runoff of aircraft washed after flying through radioactive cloud.
MICHEL DESFONTAINE: What I ask is for recognition for services rendered for France, for the nation. And we are claming compensation of course --but the main thing we want is moral compensation.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: This is a very sacred place.
This is the place where we used to sacrifice human sacrifice.
BORMANN: Undaunted by the brush off on his first Presidential trip to Paris, Oscar Temarus back home and calling on his people to embrace their spiritual past.
The marae is a traditional place of worship for Polynesians, but as much as Oscar Temaru looks to the ancient past for enlightenment, hes reminded of unfinished business in his countrys more recent history. The French Government has told him that any former Moruroa worker will be able to receive social security benefits if theyre sick, but proving the connection is still the difficulty.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: The hospital used to be controlled by the army. Thats a big problem.
BORMANN: Do those records exist or have they disappeared?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: They have disappeared. Its secret defence.
BORMANN: Theyre still under lock and key somewhere?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes, yes.
BORMANN: So do you as President expect to have a chance to get that key and open it?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well try our best.
Music
BORMANN: French Polynesias first study into the health of its people is likely to be stymied through lack of information before it gets off the ground. Theres concerted political opposition here as well. Senator Gaston Flosse, the President of twenty years, used to swim in that lagoon of Moruroa to demonstrate it was safe.
Now he wishes the whole issue would go away.Senator Flosse, you have worked very hard for French Polynesia.
SENATOR FLOSSE: Oh come on! Well stop right here, theres no point in carrying on. I didnt come here to talk about nuclear tests.
BORMANN: Sir, there are some other questions Id like to ask you if possible.
SENATOR FLOSSE: They just want to talk about -- nuclear tests and victims of radiation. Weve wasted almost half an hour just on these things. If Id known it was abut these issues, I would have refused to do this interview.
BORMANN: Its an entrenched belief in traditional Polynesian society that to hurt the land is to harm the people. Roland Oldhams organisation is made up of thousands of men who claim theyre victims of a momentous event that shook the land again and again. Now they want a new untested President to be their advocate.
ROLAND OLDHAM: We do hope that in the future, with a new government, we may have some open door to come across the truth.
BORMANN: Do you think theres a chance that now that hes President that things will change and that he will become a politician and forget where he came from?
ROLAND OLDHAM: Well it would be sad for him if he forgets where he comes from, I dont believe thats going to be the case. I do believe that his struggle, his engagement in issues of independence like in nuclear issue is something that comes strongly from deep inside the guy.
BORMANN: The new President wants his country to be independence from France in ten to fifteen years. In the meantime, theres the Moruroa campaign to run and its personal for a reason he doesnt often talk about.
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Yes we lost one of our sons, he was -- my wife was seven months pregnant and we lost the second one. He was handicapped. He was seventeen years old and you have all those problems in every family.
BORMANN: And hows your own health?
PRESIDENT TEMARU: Well I can say Im still alright, still alright.
Singing
BORMANN: The multinational nuclear testing ground that was the South Pacific has produced a generation of victims unable to explain their afflictions. No one even knows how many sick there are anyway. In French Polynesia, the crusading anti-nuclear leader turned President is only a flimsy hold on power and hostile relations with mother France.
The civilian and military workers of the early above ground testing are ailing and aging and in a country with the highest rate of thyroid cancer in the world, a culture of silence is keeping a lid on happenings of what the Polynesians call the place of the big secret.
Reporter: Trevor Bormann
Camera: Geoffrey Lye, John Benes, Terry Palmer
Sound: Kate McCure
Editor: Garth Thomas
Research: Anna Bracks