This Week’s Featured Interview:
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 nuclear weapons tests at the Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in French Polynesia. This included 46 atmospheric tests that caused widespread radioactive fallout across the Pacific, contaminating an estimated 110,000 people —nearly the entire population of the territory at the time.
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross at the 2023 Nuclear Free Future Awards
Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross is from French Polynesia. In her mid-thirties, she became an activist when she realized that her leukemia was a legacy of the 193 French nuclear tests in the South Pacific. She conquered her blood cancer and became a collector of unheard stories of suffering and ignored medical records from the Polynesian people. In doing so, she put pressure on the French government, which to this day lacks accountability for its actions. Hinamoera fights for recognition, medical care and financial compensation for victims, and in 2023 was awarded the Nuclear Free Future Award. In May 2023, seeking a wider base of authority for her actions, she moved into politics and was elected to the Polynesian Assembly of Representatives.
I spoke with Hinamoeura Morgant-Cross for Nuclear Hotseat #678 on June 18, 2024.
Special ICAN Feature – Tonga 100th Signatory to Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons:
| The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) marked the landmark 100th signatory to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) – the Kingdom of Tonga. To mark this benchmark event, we present excerpts from an ICAN video: WHAT INSPIRES YOU TO ACT. |
Participants include:
- Susi Snyder, who was then with PAX Netherlands and now is ICAN’s Director of Programmes, including Don’t Bank on the Bomb
- Tilman Ruff of Australia, one of ICAN’s co-founders.
- Linnet Ngayu from Kenya is on the Council of Religious Leaders, which convenes faith leaders across 14 traditions in support of peace and the work of the United Nations. She is also a member of Religions for Peace, the world’s largest and most representative multi-religious coalition advancing common action for peace among the world’s religious
- Akira Kawasaki, a member of the Executive Committee of the Tokyo-based NGO Peace Boat.
- Setsuko Thurlow, from Japan and Canada – a hibakusha, atomic bomb survivor originally from Hiroshima, who is notably one of ICAN’s foremost campaigners for the TPNW.
- Dr. Ira Helfand, a member of the International Steering Group of ICAN..
- Ray Acheson. At the time of this recording, THEY were Director of Reaching Critical Will, the disarmament programme of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF).
- Cristian Wittmann, an Associate Professor at the Federal University of Pampa in Brazil, specializing in international law and humanitarian disarmament. He works with SEHLAC, which translates as the Latin American Human Secular Network.
You can learn more about what you can do to help by signing up at: nuclearban.org/signup