New Zealand's Nuclear-free Zone - Mururoa Protests

Mururoa Protests

Community inspired anti-nuclear sentiments largely contributed to the New Zealand Labour Party election victory under Norman Kirk in 1972. In June 1973, the International Court of Justice (pursuant to a case launched by Australia and New Zealand) ordered that the French cease atmospheric nuclear testing at Mururoa atoll while the case was being heard by the Court. However, the French ignored this ruling. Mururoa was the site of numerous protests by various vessels, including the Rainbow Warrior. In a symbolic act of protest the Kirk government sent two of its navy frigates, HMNZS Canterbury and Otago, into the test zone area in 1973. A Cabinet Minister (Fraser Colman) was randomly selected to accompany this official New Zealand Government protest fleet. This voyage included a number of local kiwi peace organisations who had organised an international flotilla of protest yachts that accompanied the frigates into the Mururoa zone. Many of the early NZ peace activists and organisations were enthusiastic young hippies and students, many of whom were involved with the counter-culture and the original opposition to the Vietnam War movements.

Peace yachts attempting to disrupt the French tests sailed in coordinated protests through the Mururoa exclusion zones between 1972-1991. These included the voyage of the first joint Greenpeace-CND campaign in 1972 with David McTaggart, (who co-founded Greenpeace), on the yacht Vega (renamed Greenpeace III). This was followed in 1973 by a flotilla of yachts organised by the Peace Media with protest yachts Fri, Spirit of Peace, the Boy Roel, Magic Isle and the Tanmure.

During numerous voyages to Mururoa atoll the protest yachts Fri, Vegas and Greenpeace were boarded by French commandos and members of their crew assaulted and arrested. In 1973 the Vega was rammed by a French military warship and David McTaggart was severely beaten by French military police. A major change in New Zealand society caused by these Pacific campaigns was the upsurge in pro anti-nuclear sentiments in New Zealand and, as a consequence, the eventual rise of its anti-nuclear policy in 1987.

According to French journalist Luis Gonzales-Mata in Actual magazine 1976, large numbers of Polynesians had been secretly sent on military flights to Paris for treatment for cancer. Tahitian activist Charlie Ching told a nuclear-free Pacific hui in Auckland in 1983 that more than 200 Tahitians had died from radiation-linked illnesses over 5 years. Due to the secrecy of health issues in French Polynesia, these figures remained impossible to confirm.

In August 2006 people of French Polynesia welcomed an official report by the French government confirming the link between an increase in the cases of thyroid cancer and France's atmospheric nuclear tests in the territory since 1966.