Between 1960 and 1966, the French government carried out 17 nuclear explosions in
the Sahara. Four near Reggane and thirteen in the In Ekker mountain range. 3aerial and 14 underground. Without naming the "sub-critical" tests also releasingradioactive materials and in particular plutonium. ---- For the greatness ofFrance ---- In 1958, General De Gaulle returned and took over the presidency ofFrance. Already in "business" after the liberation, he created the CEA -Centerfor Atomic Energy- in 1954. The French leaders then decided, in the name ofnational independence, in the face of the Americans and the Russians(1), to equipthe country with nuclear weapons. The greatness of France must have its place atthe table with the other military and nuclear powers. Algeria still French,the Sahara is ideal for carrying out nuclear tests in the areas of Reggane andthe mountainous area of In Ekker. Since November 1954, the Algerian revolutionmodestly named "the events of Algeria" is underway. It will lead to the Evianagreements signed on March 18, 1962 between the French authorities and thedelegates of the GPRA: the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic. Theseagreements will lead to the independence of the Algerian people on July 5, 1962.But if independence is acquired, France discreetly obtains a four-year lease inthe Sahara where nuclear tests have already taken place.blue jerboaIt was on February 13, 1960 that the first shooting took place in Reggane. Thiswill be Operation Gerboise (2). Its power will be four times greater than theAmerican bomb dropped on Hiroshima in Japan. And, according to the military andCEA officials, the shots are clean. But silence and secrecy remain in order. Yetof these 17 nuclear explosions, some were not clean, controlled, "were notcontained". Such as the accident that occurred during the so-called "Béryl" test,which caused the death of 9 soldiers and heavily irradiated a number of localvillagers and nomadic Tuaregs.If after the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, Ukrainian radioactivity stopped atthe Franco-German border, according to the rulers and other dictators, thatproduced in the Sahara around Reggane did spread through the inconsistency of itsinitiators and also carried by the winds. The radioactive impact will affect theareas of the Sahel first: Mali, Mauretania, Niger... then towards the Westaccording to the winds Chad where the populations have inhaled or drunk the watercontaminated by cesium 131 or, 137, Libya with in particular the region ofFezzan. It will be discovered that thirteen days after February 1960 and the"Blue Jerboa" firing, the radioactive fallout will extend in addition to thecountries mentioned, to all of the Mediterranean countries, the coasts of Spainand part of Sicily. In March of the same year, hot particles carried byprecipitation were even detected in southern Sweden. Incidents which will berevealed by "Le Parisien" much later in 2014 and after investigation anddeclassification of secret files.Thus, having come to the end of the lease granted by Algeria, the Frenchcolonizer will leave the Sahara and continue its race for nuclear weapons in"French" Polynesia where it will carry out 193 shots : 46 atmospheric and147 underground from the atolls of Mururoa and Fongataufa . The reign ofPresident F. Mitterrand from 1981 was marked in July 1985 by the attack on the"Rainbow Warrior" boat of the NGO Green Peace, which was protesting againstFrench nuclear tests in the Pacific. Accompanying a vast movement of opinion inFrance and internationally against nuclear testing, the ship was sunk in the portof Aukland in New Zealand. A sabotage sponsored by the French president and hisdefense minister Charles Hernu. A Portuguese photographer, F. Peirera will diethere. Two days later two French agents of the DGSE will be arrested andimprisoned. Following the international scandal raised but also the settling ofscores in the "Mitterrandie", Ch Hernu will resign on April 15, 1985.President J. Chirac continued or resumed trials in 1995 despite internationalcondemnations and even the interventions of Green Peace. It was not until 1996that France ratified the CTBT: Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty adopted bythe UN. However, this treaty does not contain any obligation to repair or coverhuman or environmental damage caused in the short or long term.The colonial legacyIf in 1967 France handed over the keys and left for Polynesia, Algeria byrecovering a sovereign independence of its territory, will discover and inherit avast overflowing and radioactive garbage can left by the former colonizer. Beforetheir departure, the policy of defense secrecy reigned in the army and thepersonnel of the CEA. In the test areas, equipment of all kinds that had beenused, contaminated a lot or little, was buried. The highly radioactive waste wasthus concreted, bunkered and then buried or left in place in enclosures,admittedly meshed. However, many observers have been able to observe cans ofbitumen, sheets, cables, pipes... left abandoned... simply left surrounded bybarbed wire. Unaware of the dangers, many of these materials have been salvagedfor personal, domestic or commercial use by local people. Some of thecontaminated buildings even served as jails for the Algerian government to internopponents of the FIS -Front Islamiste du Salut- during the dirty war. The Frenchsoldiers will recognize having buried highly contaminated material: plutoniumpellets were cemented and then buried underground. How many hectares forevercontaminated and left to everything goes in these so-called "clean" firing zones.We can consider that if the colonizer has indeed been expelled, his legacy stillpresent is very poisonous for the populations. Regarding the French officials ontheir own shots and the precautions taken, the responsibility of France remainsfull and criminal to this day. The colonizer left, without any inventory, withouthanding over an exact map of the areas to be monitored, or even to be deniedaccess. Left without leaving any information to the Algerian government, whichcould no doubt have ensured security and health monitoring for the local populations.It was not until 2010 through incessant legal and media battles for that theFrench authorities recognized that the shots were not as clean as they had saidand admitted by the Morin law of the then Minister of Defense, recognition andcompensation for victims. To date, it is mainly the military or close personnelwho participated in these trials and Polynesians who are the most concerned andbenefit from compensation. Only 1 Algerian was able to benefit from it. However,the Algerians need this information because experts and scientists have noted theheavy consequences left by these atomic radiations. In the two regions close tothe firing zones, the rates of skin cancer, thyroid cancer, etc. are twice ashigh as in the other regions. Between 27,000 and 60,000 people were affected byunusual levels of radiation according to Oran physics professor A.K Al Aboudi.Genetic modifications appear on children... Remember that a grain of sand canretain radiation for 24,000 years.It is the same for the Libyans of Fezzan where the radioactive fallout continuesto kill. There too, the groundwater had been contaminated, irradiated. Thiscountry suffers from the incessant westerly winds which transport radioactivedust. For southwestern Libya, the consequences, the impact on the population aremuch less documented. In addition to the obstructions made by the French,Algerian and Libyan authorities, there is the country's decline since September2011 with the chaos and civil war provoked by Sarkoz's France, accompanied by theUnited Kingdom of D. Cameron and NATO.In January 2022, the TIAN - International Treaty for the Prohibition of NuclearWeapons - comes into force. This treaty was initially adopted by the UN in 2017.It induces for the first time in its articles 6 and 7, "the obligation to provideassistance to victims and restoration of the environment... with measures ofinternational cooperation and assistance". Will the French government be part ofthis process to settle the dispute and heal the wounds of its colonization? It istrue that for France, as for Algeria, the destabilization of the Sahel followingthe imperialist interventions of the West in Libya, the dispute over theconsequences of nuclear tests, has given way for the moment to the fight againstIslamist terrorism.December 15 04 2023Ratings1...1945, the American atomic bombs explode on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.1954 the Soviet atomic bomb, will explode in November.2... The other shots will be white, red in honor of the tricolor then green...http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3775_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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