Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 214-215
Claude Marere
Claude Marere, Tahiti, Polynesia. Journalist, works with
Radio Te Reo o Tefana.
(This speech was held originally in French)
Hello, my name is Claude Marere, and I have been working as a journalist in Tahiti since 1968. I would like to talk here about a subject that I know well, which is the reaction of the Tahitian press towards the bomb and the independency movement.
In 1966, when the first bomb exploded in
Moruroa, there were three newspapers written in
French in Tahiti. At that time, 60,000 people
were living on the island, people that spoke
French hardly or not at all. The reporters were
French, most of them had just arrived, so I had
been the only Tahitian journalist for a long
time. Since then, things have not changed much. There
still are no Tahitian journalists working in
Tahitian newspapers and if they are, they do not
treat delicate subjects.
When newspapers started writing about
the bomb, the pages were entirely covered with
pictures about the arrival of a new warship, a
change of leaders or the visit of a minister to
assist a start. Through all these common topics,
the bomb has become sort of innocent, just
something trivial, as if the French atomic
experiments were not dangerous at all, as if the
bomb were a gift, an extraordinary chance given
to us by France. Each Greenpeace-campaign --
whom we should thank so much -- and each protest
movement coming from New Zealand caused extremely
violent reactions in the local press. Independents
and people who are against the
nuclear program are treated as traitors or ingrates
in their own country. Anyone who does not accept
the bomb and the French culture is ignored and
disregarded. It has become as simple as that: If it
is true, the newspapers will write about it and if
they don't, nothing of that exists.
In 1981, the government became socialist
and radio stations were liberalized. And those
municipalities interested in the union with
France were the first to create their own radio
stations. In the Pacific, Tahitian is the language
of oral tradition and of radio stations. From now
on, the brain storming is in both languages, French
in the press and Tahitian on the radio. The
basic idea is that Polynesia could not
survive by itself and that only the bomb could
lead to a kind of life that other little nations in
the Pacific would dream of. At the same time,
the protest movements from the population,
their dreams of emancipation, the regions
with poor people filled to the top, the problems of
Polynesians at school and at work, the always
growing French community (the French represent
nowadays 15 percent of the population of the
island, this immigration being of high quality with
a dominant influence in economy and the
society). The Polynesians are losing their
homeland, but the indifference about this fact is now
general.
In the middle of the seventies, Oscar
Temarou takes the place in the independent
movement. This is a political party with no
financial resources. The militants are very poor
people. Oscar Temarou will become sort of a
pilgrim, crossing valleys, going from village to
village, from house to house. His audience
becoming larger and larger on Tahiti and the
confining islands, he will travel even to further
archipels. Distances are long and the travels
dangerous, you have to take many different ships,
small fishermen's ships that sometimes break
down or even could sink out in the middle of the
sea. It is hard work. They needed a media to break
with this silence of conspiracy at a time when the
pressure was getting bigger and bigger. The two
surviving newspapers of Tahiti were bought in the
eighties by the Erson Group, the biggest one of the
French press. Fortunately, the State had to start
some necessary procedures in order to create a
radio station which was supported by pro-French
municipalities. Oscar Temarou, at that time mayor
of the municipality of Faa, will take the chance
and create his own radio station in 1988, the "Te
Reo o Tefana". This station calls itself
"Anti-Atomic Radio" and broadcasts news in both
languages. I have been working in that station
since then. But after four years, the station
realizes that its part is quite limited and that the
slogan "If it is not in the newspapers, it doesn't
exist" still goes around and that words can be
forgotten, but the cry stays and can pass from hand
to hand. That's why we decided to create a
newspaper. We started working on this project and
bought the necessary material. With a bit of luck,
it should be edited at the end of the year or at
least at the beginning of the next year.
I would like to say something about the
media of the French State, as for instance RFO. RFO
is a radio and T.V.-station, I can't remember
what these letters stand for, but in Tahitian they
call it "Radio faofao-uré", which means "the
radio that's good for nothing". In fact, it still is
helpful, reaching the deepest points of the islands
and the farest valleys and it has very important
means. During the last four years, the territory
and the State created a program for satellite-T.V. in
order to reach very far islands. This means that
they have to put other new stations on the spot for
a price of one million dollars each. The result of all
this is that a community of 300, sometimes 500
or 800 people can watch T.V. This is crazy. For
the independents, this money would be more
helpful if used for development or didactical
programs.
That's all, I thank you for your attention.