In a far-off land with a strange name, French Polynesia, some people with dark skins – barely worthy of being considered humans – were an obstacle to France’s need to develop its nuclear weapons programme.
So France tested its nuclear bombs anyway – 193 times over a 30-year period – showering them in radioactive dust. In one test alone, in 1974, France exposed the 120,000 inhabitants of Tahiti to 500 times the maximum allowed level of plutonium fallout.
This is one tiny example of colonialism in action, a secret history of crimes against humanity that are carefully released one revelation at a time, squirrelled away on the foreign pages where they are unlikely to disturb our consciences too much.
Do our state elites care about the natives who stand in the way of their pursuit of dominance and profit? No. Do they care any more about us, if we stand in their way? Of course, not.
www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/03/french-nuclear-tests-polynesia-declassified
