By Angela Marie Watkins
Impunity Watch Reporter, Oceania

PAPEETE, French Polynesia – French Polynesian court has ruled in favor of three children of a deceased nuclear weapons test veteran who sought compensation for the effects of the tests.

The court found that the Atomic Energy Commissariat had failed in its obligation as an employer to provide security and ordered that each claimant be paid 11,000 US dollars.

The Nuclear Workers’ Association Moruroa E. Tatou has expressed disappointment at the low compensation sum. However, today’s decision coincided with the French parliament beginning debates on a landmark bill for compensating the victims of nuclear tests carried out in French Polynesia and Algeria over more than three decades.

About 150,000 civilian and military personnel took part in 210 nuclear tests carried out in the Sahara desert and the Pacific between 1960 and 1996, many of whom later developed serious health problems.

The government unveiled a bill on compensating the test victims in March, after decades of denying its responsibility for fear the admission would have weakened its nuclear program during the Cold War.

Under the bill, which is to be put to the vote on June 30, a nine-member committee of physicians, led by a magistrate, will examine individual claims for compensation.

Defense Minister Herve Morin told the lower-house National Assembly that the bill, thirteen years after the end of the tests in the Pacific, will allow France to serenely close a chapter of its history.

For more information, please see:

New Zealand International Radio – French Polynesian Court rules in favour of nuclear test veteran’s children – 25 June 2009

New Zealand International Radio – France begins debating nuclear compensation bill – 25 June 2009

Australian News – French debate nuclear test compo – 26 June 2009