During a speech in Papeete, on Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged, the “debt” of France towards this overseas territory and promised transparency on the nuclear tests carried out in the archipelago until 1996.
“I assume and I want the truth and transparency with you,” Macron said in a speech to Polynesian officials on Tuesday July 27, in Papeete, Tahiti island. The French President said that France owed “a debt” to French Polynesia for the nuclear tests in French Polynesia, and that the victims of these tests should be better compensated. “The nation has a debt towards French Polynesia. This debt is the fact of having housed these tests in particular those between 1966 and 1974, which we can absolutely not say that they were clean”, Macron declared on the last day of his trip in French Polynesia.
But he did not utter the word “forgiveness” which was demanded by associations of victims of these tests.
Macron’s speech (french version) :
