Nuclear bans in Pacific owe little to New Zealand example

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 20

Nuclear bans in Pacific owe little to New Zealand example

lan Campbell, lecturer in history at Canterbury

University, looks at the spread of a policy

NUCLEAR BANS are a political issue. During 1987 the policies of political parties in New Zealand have been much, publicised, and links have been suggested between the policy of the New Zealand Government on nuclear ship visits, and the adoption of similar policies elsewhere — specifically in Fiji before the recent coup. A supposed anti-nuclear contagion was spoken of during the recent New Zealand election campaign. In fact, an antinuclear position has been strongly held by many Pacific Island nations for many years, and owes little or nothing to New Zealand example or influence.

An awareness of the nuclear issue in the Pacific Islands extends back to 1966 when France began testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere at Mururoa. This was a time of growing political awareness among islanders because the age of decolonisation had recently begun. Western Samoa had become independent in 1962; the Cook Islands had become self-governing in 1965; Nauru in 1968 and Tonga and Fiji in 1970 were also to join the list of independent nations.

Other territories were preparing for their own independence dates. Five more nations were to become independent during the next ten years. Previously, international affairs had been a matter for the colonial powers, but now in the late ’6os and early ’7os the new nations were to take a keen interest in international politics as something which affected them deeply.

The prime cause of interest in the nuclear issue was the drift of nuclear contamination downwind from Mururoa by the southeast trade-winds, a fact which caused considerable concern to the new Governments of the region. In 1970 a public meeting in Fiji formed a pressure group with the support of the Prime Minister, Ratu Mara, to be known by the acronym A.T.O.M.

(Against Testing on Mururoa). A.T.O.M. campaigned vigorously from the start, and in the same year addressed a meeting of the South Pacific Conference (an international body which oversees the work of the South Pacific Commission) on the biological consequences of nuclear testing. In 1971 the Governments of Tonga, Western Samoa, Fiji, the Cook Islands, and Nauru sent a joint protest to France, about its testing programme at Mururoa, and at the first meeting of the South Pacific Forum later that year France was called upon to end its testing programme. France agreed to a pause. When testing resumed in 1972 Fiji announced that it was banning all French ships and aircraft which might have any connection with the tests. Fijian unions, like their Australian and New Zealand counterparts, went further and banned commercial contacts with France. The Deputy Prime Minister of Fiji addressed the United Nations on the subject, and in 1973 the Governments of New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji all applied to the World Court to rule against continued French testing. The French Government felt obliged to take some notice of Pacific protests, and in 1975 began testing weapons underground instead of in the atmosphere. This change in procedure seems to have taken much of the vigour from the protest movement, for although the South Pacific Forum supported New Zealand’s call in 1975 for a South Pacific nuclear free zone, action

dwindled. The defeat of Labour Governments in both Australia and New Zealand later that year deprived the protest movement in those countries of the official patronage it had enjoyed for the previous three years. During the 1960 s and 1970 s the peoples of, the American-admin-istered territory of the Marshall Islands, part of Micronesia in the North Pacific, also took up the nuclear issue. Weapons testing by the United States in Micronesia ended in 1962, just at the time that the French began to build their testing facilities in French Polynesia. So the basis of Micronesian claims was not the desire to halt testing, but to seek compensation for the serious injury to the .health of many people through radio-active contamination, and restoration of the island homelands made uninhabitable by the explosions of the previous fifteen years.

Lawsuits by Marshallese against the United States Government began in 1960, and continue. Substantial compensation payments have been made, and hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent in nuclear clean-up campaigns. Ironically, the Marshaellese depend on U.S. military spending for most of their income, and are therefore interested more in compensation for damage done in the past than in the sort of bans known in the South Pacific. They have been willing to trade some of their independence for large subsidies and allow the United States virtually unlimited access for defence purposes. So

have most of the rest of Micronesia, including the Mariana Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. (Yap, Truk, Ponape, and Kosrae). Alone among the Micronesian States Belau in the extreme west has stood out for an absolute ban on all nuclear materials. In 1979 the Belauans adopted a constitution with anti-nuclear provisions. Thus, unlike New Zealand, which has anti-nuclear laws which can be repealed whenever a majority in parliament decides to change policies, Belau must have a constitutional amendment This requires a 75 per cent majority in referendum.

Eight times since 1979 the Government of Belau has tried to amend the constitution so that it too can secure the sort of subsidies being paid to the rest of Micronesia. A majority of Belauans agree, but not enough of them to change the constitution. Feelings on the nuclear issue ran extremely high. -This issue was probably at the bottom of the assassination of the President of Belau in 1985. Two referendums have been held in Belau in 1987. The first, on August 4 was to remove the constitutional nuclear ban. The second, on August 22, was on the compact of free assocation with the United States, which included provision for visits by nuclear ships although banned' installations on shore. A majority of votes in both cases was cast, but the constitutional validity of the first remains in doubt. Even if it is upheld, a restriction on the use of Belauan territory for nuclear purposes remains.

This restriction,,has ;roughly the same terms as the, so-called Treaty of Rarotonga. The Treaty of Rarotonga, hammered\out at the ,1985 meeting of the 'South . Pacific Forum, declares; the South Pacific to be a nuclear free zone, although the definition of - “nuclear : free” does hot restrict the movements of ships or aircraft So far this declaration has been endorsed by China and the Soviet Union, but Britain, France, and the United, States have refused. Of Pacific States of the South Pacific including Australia and New Zealand, all have except Vanuatu and Tonga. .'.Vanuatu’s objection is that the treaty is too weak to be effective, and had pressed for much stronger terms at the conference.- ■ ' 'Vanuatu declared- itself nuclear-free in 1982. Ship visits are thus banned. Fiji under the Government of Ratu Mara adopted, a similar position also in 1982. Both these’ declarations pre-dated the election of the anti-nuclear Lange Government The Fijian Government, subject to strong American pressure subsequently dropped its ban. Its reinstatement had been under consideration by the Bavadra ' Government at the time of the coup on May 4. The policy Of the Fijian Labour Party, one of , the partners in the Bavadra coali- . tion, was in favour of a total nuclear ban. Concern about nuclear issues in the Pacific therefore is not recent;Nor has it been imported • from ■ elsewhere. Nor \is that concern specifically anti-French or anti-American;'*'All Pacific Island governments would like to be on good terms with both of those Powers. 1 ; ; >

The essence of their disquiet is the fragility of island ecologies, and that the powerful countries should use or misuse a large part of the Earth’s surface for their own purposes without regard to the interests of the. people who live there. .

‘Concern about nuclear issues in the Pacific is not recent, nor has it been imported from elsewhere’