WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE News Journal Update - (en) France, OCL CA #332 - "O France! the day has come when you must be accountable» Nuclear tests in the Sahara (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 See online: Nuclear tests on the site of the armaments observatory

https://www.obsarm.info/spip.php?rubrique44 ---- "O France! the day has
come when you must give an account"[1] ---- It is 56 years since France
left the Sahara in 1967, after having carried out 17 nuclear tests
there, before settling in Polynesia where it continued them until 1996.
The equivalent of two generations. And yet, the dispute caused by these
nuclear explosions between the two countries is still unresolved and
just as "radioactive". To the chagrin of the people who are still
suffering the effects. Alternating current of May 16, 2023 drew up an
initial inventory. In this new article, we will analyze what blocks and
prevents any progress for the benefit of the victims of these nuclear tests.

A radioactive "desert"

To give a measure of the amount of radioactivity dispersed in the
Sahara, the 4 atmospheric tests represent the equivalent of 5 times the
Hiroshima bomb and the 13 so-called underground tests, the equivalent of
18 Little Boy, according to the name that the Americans had attributed
to him, not without a good dose of cynicism considering the power of
this explosive without common measure with those used until then. An
extraordinary amount of radioactive material locked up in the mountain
as far as underground testing is concerned, spread their poison for tens
of thousands of years yet. Even exits from the mountain during the
uncontrolled test of Béryl on May 1, 1962, which saw it shaken by the
power of the machine releasing radioactive lava; which created a great
panic among the staff and the two ministers Pierre Messmer and Gaston
Palewski present that day.

In addition to this accident, we must not forget all the radioactive
materials circulating around the earth, mixed with those of the
atmospheric explosions of the other nuclear powers, even returning like
a boomerang during sandstorms reaching France and beyond in particular.
. We must also add the approximately 2 kilos of plutonium buried in the
Hammoudia area, resulting from the so-called "subcritical" tests to test
the initiation of the bombs; that is to say without triggering a chain
reaction.

Last element to set the radioactive scene left in heritage: the waste
abandoned on the spot by the French army when it liberated the area in
1967 - ranging from almost new machines, vehicles, kilometers of copper
cables, to to boxes of tools - preferring, in particular for reasons of
financial costs, to dig large holes in the sand to bury them, rather
than repatriating them to France to treat them as waste.
No serious information was then delivered to the populations, nor set up
a markup of the impacted zones. Because the use of the word desert to
qualify the area does not mean the absence of villages or regular
passages of caravans or herds. And quite logically most of these
materials were recovered, either to use them, or for their market value,
thus dispersing the radioactivity they contained.

irresponsible disinformation
Conscious of the risks that this represented for them and their
populations, the nuclear powers all carried out their nuclear explosions
on the borders of their territory or in colonized zones. France is,
however, the only one to have prosecuted them in a country that has
acquired its independence. Indeed, the war in Algeria was already
underway when the government decided to install its test site in the
Sahara, but after prospecting different places, what led to the choice
of the Sahara was the proximity to the metropolis and the prospect of
speed of the installation so that France demonstrates as quickly as
possible in the eyes of the world, its capacity to explode an atomic
bomb. Not to mention that the power in no way envisaged a victory for
the separatists... And even when the inevitability of independence began
to be envisaged, Charles De Gaulle cherished the hope of a partition of
the Algerian territory in order to keep the Sahara under French
tutelage! The Algerian negotiators did not give in on territorial
integrity, but to put an end to the war and all these atrocities for the
population, they had to concede to France the possibility of using the
military installations for another 5 years. The Évian agreements, signed
on March 19, 1962, confirm this concession but to put an end to the war
and all these atrocities for the population, they had to concede to
France the possibility of using the military installations for another 5
years. The Évian agreements, signed on March 19, 1962, confirm this
concession but to put an end to the war and all these atrocities for the
population, they had to concede to France the possibility of using the
military installations for another 5 years. The Évian agreements, signed
on March 19, 1962, confirm this concession[2].

But taking into account the context of the time, where moreover ecology
was very far from being the concern of the company, no obligation of
complete dismantling, restoration of the environment and health
monitoring of the local populations like personnel who took part in the
tests, was not then recorded or even negotiated.
Thus, "after seven years of various experiments, the two sites of
Reggane and In Ekker were handed over to Algeria without any modality of
control and follow-up of the radioactivity having been planned",
underlines the socialist deputy Christian Bataille in a report published
in 1997 by the Parliamentary Office for the Evaluation of Scientific and
Technological Choices. And to drive the point home: "The political
circumstances which led to the abandonment of these two sites can
explain the indifference with which we[France]then dealt with these
problems. While acknowledging that "the fact remains that we showed a
certain levity, to put it mildly" [3].

Ultimately, the majority of the tests carried out by France in the
Sahara - 11 out of 17 - were carried out when Algeria was independent
and with the agreement of the country's authorities. This state of
affairs is undoubtedly one of the first causes of the ambiguity of the
Algerian authorities in the management of the file.
Especially since there is a third site which was used by the French army
until the end of the 1970s - so well beyond 1967 -, in conjunction with
the army Algerian: the site of Colomb-Béchar-Hammaguir, near the border
with Morocco. On this site were carried out tests for the propulsion of
the missiles and especially were tested chemical weapons. An even more
deafening silence surrounds the consequences of these experiments for
the staff and the surrounding population and therefore their management
to reduce the effects.

Towards an exit from denial
For several decades, the official discourse was that the French trials
were clean, under control, so there could be no problems. An attitude
made possible, on the one hand, by not carrying out serious scientific
studies on the consequences for the population, and, on the other hand,
by stamping the seal of defense secrecy on the various data which could
make it possible to evaluate the consequences of nuclear testing. This
was the case for documents on nuclear power rendered incommunicable
following the modification of the law on access to archives in July
2008, when we reached a period when the first archives on the bomb were
going to become accessible.
On the side of the movements against nuclear weapons, the priority
focused, on the one hand, against the threat of a nuclear war on the
European continent between the two blocs which then had at the height of
the arms race about 70,000 nuclear warheads and, on the other hand, on
the cessation of nuclear tests carried out to improve weapons.
Admittedly, the question of the health and environmental consequences
figured in the arguments developed at that time, but it was not the
subject of a specific fight in France.

The cessation of tests and their ban at the international level was only
obtained on September 10, 1996 with the adoption at the UN of the
Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Irony of history: the decision to
resume firing in Polynesia by Jacques Chirac in 1995 following his
accession to the presidency of the French Republic, triggered such an
international movement of protest that he gave an involuntary boost to
adoption of this treaty which has been under negotiation for many years.
The first collections of testimonies from victims of French trials, both
in Algeria and in Polynesia, as well as the first studies [4]emerge in
the public space only at the beginning of the 1990s, mainly at the
instigation of the CDRPC (Centre for documentation and research on peace
and conflicts created in Lyon in 1984, since 2008 entitled Observatoire
des armes). And it was not until 2001 that specific associations were
set up bringing together victims and former workers in Metropolitan
France and French Polynesia [5].

Then, during the 2000s, there was a gradual rise in France in awareness
of the consequences of nuclear tests for personnel and populations,
which was relayed by the media and led parliamentarians to also seize
the subject. Each political group represented in Parliament will table a
bill, environmentalists on the right. Thus, in about ten years, this
mobilization will lead to the adoption of a "Law relating to the
recognition and compensation of the victims of French nuclear tests",
known as the Morin law, named after the Minister of Defense of the time,
published in the Official Bulletin in 2010. It applies to all
populations, such as civilian and military personnel, residing in
Algeria in Polynesia or in mainland France. Very restrictive at the
start it will still have been necessary for the associations to carry
out numerous actions for the law to be amended and to be able to better
compensate the victims. To date, it is still far from fulfilling this
objective and would require further improvements.

Indeed, since 2010 and until December 31, 2021, according to the latest
figures made public, 1,954 files have been registered by the Civen
(Committee for Compensation of Victims of Nuclear Tests), according to
its 2021 activity report. , available on the government website. Only 57
come from people residing in Algeria. This low number of files can be
explained, on the one hand, by the difficulties in gaining access to the
system and gathering all the necessary documents, if only for Algerians
because all the forms and the procedure are in French... And, on the
other hand, because of the restrictive conditions still in force in the
law: to prove its presence in restrictive zones, during the period of
the tests and to have one of the 23 diseases listed by decree.

France-Algeria, I love you neither
In Algeria, the attempt to set up an association in the early 2000s
failed for reasons related to the administrative system of associations,
but also because the Algerian government wanted to keep control of the
file in these relations. with France. Admittedly, in 1999, Algeria had
requested an expertise of the Saharan sites from the IAEA (International
Atomic Energy Agency). But an expert from the CEA (Atomic Energy
Commission), the organization that carried out the tests, was among the
members of the IAEA mission! As a result, the IAEA report, published
only in 2005, is marred by major errors and inconsistencies, the IAEA
experts having only been able to carry out too few measurements and
samples to support their work,

The Algerian government has indeed risen up on many occasions against
the tests qualified as "colonial crimes", but without however launching
its own studies to carry out an inventory. In 2007, he notably organized
a major international symposium and demanded reparations. Following
President Nicolas Sarkozy's visit to Algiers in December 2007, the
establishment of an Algerian-French committee was announced to establish
an inventory of the polluted sites, determine the risks for the
inhabitants and the environment and propose rehabilitation measures. But
no assessment of the work or recommendations have been published.
Impossible even to know if, and how many times, the commission really met!
In 2014, a new Algerian-French working group was set up in application
of the "Algiers Declaration on friendship and cooperation between France
and Algeria", signed on December 19, 2012 during the visit of the
President Francois Hollande. With this time the objective, following the
entry into force of the Morin Law, to discuss the conditions for
presenting compensation files for Algerian victims. According to
information published since, it met only once on February 3, 2016! That
speaks for itself.

Once he became President in 2017, Emmanuel Macron also faced the
memorial dispute with Algeria resulting from French colonization. A
dossier which is moving up and down as the news takes care of reminding
us regularly, "except on two aspects: the question of the archives and
that of the nuclear tests carried out by France in the Algerian Sahara",
according to the very words of the Minister of Mujahideen Tayeb Zitouni
in charge of the file [6].
Two subjects which nevertheless appear in the report devoted to the
memorial questions of colonization and the war in Algeria, written
during the last half of 2020 by the historian Benjamin Stora at the
request of President Macron [7]. Among the 22 recommendations it
contains, one concerns nuclear tests in the Sahara and their consequences.

The entry into force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
(TIAN) on January 22, 2021 opens up new prospects for dealing with the
health and environmental consequences of nuclear tests. Indeed, during
the negotiations in 2017 at the UN of the treaty, article 6 was
inserted, which creates obligations for the signatory States to provide
assistance to victims and rehabilitate places impacted by nuclear
energy. And Article 7 provides for international cooperation and
assistance for this purpose. Articles for which the Algerian diplomats
were involved during the negotiations of the TIAN. But if Algeria is a
signatory of the TIAN, it is reluctant to ratify it.
By decree dated June 21, 2021, Algeria set up a National Agency for the
rehabilitation of former French nuclear test and explosion sites in
southern Algeria, which could have led to believe in a change of
attitude. on his part. Unfortunately there is nothing so far. It is an
additional layer of bureaucracy without leading to real changes.

In August 2022, following President Macron's visit to Algiers, a new
mixed commission, this time of historians, was appointed, responsible
for shedding light on the colonization and war in Algeria. The question
of the consequences of nuclear testing is in his pocket. For the moment,
it would have had a meeting by videoconference in April 2023 and would
have met in early June in Paris for the first time face-to-face. No
report has been published, but at this rate, how many more years will it
take before a real handling of the file takes place?
In the absence of a coordinated movement on both sides of the
Mediterranean, it is to be feared that it will be far too many years
before the sites are cleaned of the radioactive waste left behind and
that the populations affected are actually taken care of and compensated.

Patrice Bouveret, Armaments Observatory

To find out more
* Site: obsarm.org, section "nuclear tests" where a number of articles
and documents published by the Observatory of Armaments are collected,
an independent center of expertise created in 1984 in Lyons and which
from the start is committed to obtaining Truth and Justice for the
victims of nuclear testing.
* Bruno Barrillot, French nuclear tests. The Poisoned Legacy , 2012, 320
p.; and Victims of nuclear testing. History of a fight , preface by
Christiane Taubira, 200 p. Two books published by the Armaments
Observatory, still available.
* Jean-Marie Collin & Patrice Bouveret, Under the sand, radioactivity!
Waste from French nuclear tests in Algeria. Analysis with regard to the
Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, study carried out by the
Armaments Observatory and ICAN France and published by the Heinrich Böll
Foundation, July 2020, 60 p. Free to download at obsarm.org

See also on the OCL website: Sahara: behind the dunes, France's
radioactive heritage, Current alternative, May 2023

Notes
[1] Sentence taken from the Algerian national anthem, the use of which
has just been rehabilitated by President Tebboune by decree published in
the Algerian Official Journal of May 21, 2023.

[2] Article 4 of the Évian agreements, published in Official Journal no.
3019 of March 20, 1962, p. 3030

[3] Christian Bataille, report no. 179, Developments in research on the
management of high-level nuclear waste, Volume II: Military waste ,
OPECST, December 7, 1997, p. 69

[4] Testimonies * French nuclear tests: Polynesians speak out ,
co-published by Greenpeace/Damoclès, 1990; Solange Fernex, Interviews
carried out in June 1992, Nuclear tests in Algeria , Brussels, The
Greens in the European Parliament, 1992 and Bruno Barrillot (see box)

[5] Association of nuclear test veterans (Aven) created in Lyon in June
2001 and Moruroa e tatou created on July 4, 2001 in Tahiti in Polynesia.

[6] "Nuclear tests and archives: what Algeria accuses France of", Ryad
Hamadi, July 4, 2021

[7] "Memorial questions relating to colonization and the Algerian war",
Benjamin Stora, January 2021

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3903
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