SUSANNA OUNEI-SMALL is assistant director (decolonisation) of the Suva-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre, which serves as the secretariat of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement. She is also an activist in the Kanaky (New Caledonia) independence movement. Ounei-Small spoke to Green Left Weekly's NORM DIXON.
"I am a little surprised that everyone is so shocked about the French government's decision to resume nuclear tests at Moruroa atoll in Tahiti. Pacific islanders know there is nothing new about French agencies doing whatever they want, whenever they want. We never asked the French to colonise our countries. We never asked them to set up their nuclear testing facilities. The main issue for the people of the French colonies of the Pacific remains independence", Susanna Ounei said emphatically at the outset of the interview.
The only sure way to end French nuclear tests once and for all is for France to surrender control of Kanaky, Tahiti and the islands of Wallis and Futuna, she said.
"France started nuclear testing in Tahiti in the '60s, after the people of Algeria won their independence. Nuclear tests had taken place there in the Sahara. Nuclear testing is an the extension of the colonisation of Tahiti. Today the Moahi people want their independence as well.
"Decolonisation is very important. It is the only way to denuclearise that the French cannot reverse."
The people of Tahiti and Kanaky have responded quickly to the French announcement, Ounei-Small reported. "In New Caledonia, the people have formed a collective to organise a demonstration on July 1. It will be big."
She expressed concern that the French authorities would act violently towards demonstrations, because they too see that the issues of nuclear testing and independence are closely linked. In May 1985 there was a demonstration against the visit of a French nuclear-armed submarine to Noumea. "One of our young people — he was only 18 — was killed [by the French security forces]. Whatever the issue, we are demonstrating against colonisation. I want to remind the world that that Kanak boy was protesting about independence and against nuclearisation as well."
In Tahiti, "people from the Hiti Tau movement [which groups NGOs, trade unions and environmental groups] and the popularly elected mayor of Faa'a [Tahiti's largest municipality], Oscar Temaru, are reacting against the announcement".
Temaru has a mass following and is leader of Tahiti's largest pro-independence, anti-nuclear party, Tavini Huiraatira. "They are supporting the environmentalists who are going to Moruroa to oppose the nuclear tests." A huge demonstration has been organised in Papeete to greet the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior when it arrives
on June 29.
A victory for the independence movement in Kanaky will also help rid the Pacific of nuclear weapons, Ounei-Small pointed out. France has been able to become an economic and nuclear power due to the wealth accumulated from the exploitation of colonies throughout the world in the past, and the continued exploitation of its Pacific colonies, especially Kanaky.
Kanaky is the second largest source of nickel exports in the world, and has about 33% of the world's known reserves of the mineral. The island is also rich in chrome and cobalt, metals used extensively for military purposes. The seabeds around Kanaky are rich in strategic minerals.
Seven million square kilometres of Pacific Ocean are enclosed in the exclusive economic zones of France's colonies. Ounei-Small said that the sea around Kanaky may contain up to three times the mineral wealth of the land. French companies have huge investments in mining ventures and the tourist industry.
To police its colonies, protect its investments and maintain its nuclear program, France maintains the third largest military presence in the Pacific after Australia and New Zealand. It has 5000 troops in Tahiti and 9500 soldiers and police in Kanaky. Another 2000 personnel are engaged in the nuclear program.
France has flooded its Pacific possessions with migrants from France to outnumber the local inhabitants. This policy has been most thorough in Kanaky, where the proportion of indigenous people in the island's population has declined from 52% in 1951 to 44% today. In Tahiti, 30,000 Europeans hold down the best paying jobs, while the more than 70,000 Maohi people are unemployed or hold the lowest paying, unskilled jobs. In Tahiti and Kanaky, there is an apartheid-like gulf between the rich and poor.
The independence struggle is the most developed in Kanaky. Led by the FLNKS (Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front), throughout the 1980s the movement mobilised the population. The French military and far-right settlers responded with brute force, claiming the lives of many pro-independence fighters. In the wake of a terrible massacre of Kanaks by French troops, and increasing international pressure, the FLNKS and the French government signed the Matignon Accords in 1988. The accords promised a referendum on independence in 1998 preceded by a program of economic development and "rebalancing" of regions where Kanaks live.
The accords created large divisions in the FLNKS and led to the demobilisation of the movement, with many leading activists being drawn into the administration of FLNKS-run provinces. France has continued to allow the arrival of immigrants, and new investment has overwhelmingly favoured the southern province where Europeans are concentrated. Ounei-Small's view is that nothing has changed since 1988; she believes the FLNKS must re-evaluate the accords.
France is not the only colonial power in the Pacific, Ounei-Small stressed. The United States still holds the people of American Samoa, Hawaii, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Marshall Islands, Palau and the Northern Marianas in various colonial political arrangements.
The US military maintains an ecologically dangerous chemical weapons incinerator on Johnston atoll in defiance of Pacific opinion. US nuclear-powered and armed warships cruise the Pacific. "The US is responsible for militarisation around the world. It has military bases around the Pacific and Asia. Of course our struggle is not dissociated from the struggles of people colonised by the US.
"We must also talk about indirect colonisation. The superpowers — the US and other Western powers — apply economic pressure all the time to undermine our little countries. This is so obvious in the Pacific. The US indirectly oppresses the people of the Pacific by forcing governments to expose their economies to the free market economy and insisting on privatisation. The US, France and the other powers accumulate big wealth by taking the resources of their colonies and Third World countries."
Neither is the Australian government innocent. In 1987, Australia was the biggest investor in the Pacific islands, with holdings valued at $1.6 billion. The Australian government proudly boasted that Australian companies have an "enormous influence on the economies of the Pacific". Australia exports five times more, mainly manufactured and processed foodstuffs, to the region than it imports, primarily minerals and raw materials.
These economic interests make Australia a key partner with the French and US. Australia maintains a military alliance with the US through the ANZUS treaty. As a parliamentary committee noted in 1989, Australia takes primary responsibility for pursuing "Western interests" in the South Pacific, a situation agreed to by the US. Australia hosts important US bases which enhance its nuclear war fighting capabilities and welcomes US nuclear warships.
Under Australian government pressure, the South Pacific Forum agreed to a watered down South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty in 1985. It did not prevent the movement of US nuclear-armed warships and planes through the Pacific, did not outlaw nuclear ship visits if a government agreed to them, allowed the continued presence of US bases essential to nuclear conflict and did not interfere with Australia's uranium exports. Despite this, France, the US and Britain refused to sign the treaty.
Since the signing of the Matignon Accords, Australian trade and investment in Kanaky has increased significantly. Military contacts with France in New Caledonia have increased. Last September the French minister for overseas departments and territories, Dominique Perben, visited Canberra and met with Prime Minister Keating and other senior ministers to discuss increased trade with New Caledonia and Tahiti. The Pacnews agency reported in October that Australian and New Zealand military "observers" participated in the French military's "Nord '94" military exercise that mobilised 1000 soldiers, police and aircraft in a "regional conflict scenario".
Ounei-Small said while it is good that the Australian government opposes the French tests on Moruroa, it "is not really in favour of the decolonisation of the Pacific". She cited the Australian government's economic and military support for Papua New Guinea's attempts to forcibly prevent Bougainville's secession, its support for the Matignon Accords and its opposition to independence for East Timor and the Pacific's other remaining colonies as proof of that.
Australia's willingness to sell uranium to France made it France's "best ally" in the region, Ounei-Small told Green Left Weekly. "Australia is yelling in front of everybody that the French nuclear tests must stop, but behind the scenes they are reinforcing the position of France by selling them uranium. They are the best ally of and the warranty for France, as the tests that will poison the whole Pacific begin in Tahiti."
Ounei-Small was "not surprised" to hear that Australian military officers attended recent French military exercises in New Caledonia as observers. She added that following the racially motivated 1987 military coups in Fiji, which ousted the newly elected pro-trade union and anti-nuclear Fiji Labour Party government, the French provided military training to the Fijian army.