Bastille Day ceremony

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 2

Bastille Day ceremony

Bastille Day, July 14, will be celebrated at Akaroa with a wreaththrowing ceremony at the harbour side. The environmentalist group, Greenpeace, hopes to draw attention to continued French testing of nuclear weapons at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. The wreath is to mourn publicly two workers who were killed at Mururora in nuclear accidents in July last year. A Christchurch spokesman for Greenpeace, Mr N. Higgins, said that Bastille Day was traditionally a celebration of liberty. For the people of French Polynesia that had become a “jaded joke.” “It is in the interests of all Pacific peoples, including New Zealand, that all nuclear-weapon testing be excluded from the Pacific,” he said.

According to Mr Higgins, Mururoa Atoll is a particularly dangerous area for testing. The coral is totally porous and the bassalt volcanic peak below, brittle and crumbly. After the July 27 accident, when an underground bomb was jammed at the wrong depth, he said, a crack appeared on the surface of the atoll two kilometres long. French assurances that radiation was not leaking into the sea should be treated with the “greatest suspicion.” “Greenpeace remains absolutely committed to ending French testing of nuclear weapons at Mururoa,” Mr Higgins said. “The Bastille Day ceremony will be part of that continuing campaign.”

Christchurch Peace Groups have announced they will march on the offices of UTA French

Airlines on the day. A letter will be handed to UTA for forwarding to the French Government, protesting against continued nuclear testing at Mururoa. Similar protests have been called for throughout the Pacific by the Nuclear Free Pacific Conference.

A spokesman for the Peace Groups said that Bastille Day celebrated liberty, equality and brotherhood. yet the French were denying the rights of French Polynesians to keep their land arid waters free of nuclear testing and pollution. The protest march will leave Cathedral Square at 12.15 p.m. before moving on to UTA’s offices in Hereford Street. If there is time, it will then march on Fletcher Humphreys, Ltd, the French consular agency.