A Fijian activist has criticised the US/UK/Australia military pact Aukus as harmful to Pacific security and opposes Fukushima wastewater release due to poor science and economic manipulation, urging Pacific unity on these issues.
Epeli Lesuma is the nuclear justice campaigner for Pacific Network on Globalisation. His work covers nuclear legacy issues, anti-nuclear treaties and contemporary nuclear issues.
The Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement began in Fiji in 1975 after the first Nuclear Free Pacific Conference, which was organised by ‘Against French Testing in Moruroa’ (ATOM) (founded in Fiji in 1970.)
The NFIP movement brought together indigenous peoples from Aotearoa, with Māori becoming involved in the 1980s, as well as peoples from Hawaii, Great Turtle Island, East Timor, West Papua, the Philippines, South Korea, Japan and other parts of Polynesia and Melanesia.
Pacific Network on Globalisation
The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is based in Suva, Fiji and focuses on Pacific self-determination. It was established in 2000 to address trade and economic justice in the region, and later expanded into working on deep sea mining, nuclear justice and self-determination.
PANG works with a network of people in every Pacific Island country and territory, including Guam, Hawaii, Rapanui, and Mā‘ohi Nui.
Lesuma said Aukus was a slap in the face for Pacific people.
In this era of division, and when our ocean, our sacred moana, is under immense threat from things external to us.
— Epeli Lesuma
“Our greater security concern is not China and the US having this fight with us strapped in the middle. The greatest concern for the Pacific is the climate crisis,” he said.
Read an explainer on Aukus here from the perspective of Pacific historian Marco de Jong.
Lesuma said Australia signing a secret agreement with the UK and US to allow nuclear [submarines] to cut across the nuclear-free zone in the Pacific was “utterly shameful”.
He said they should be ashamed of themselves as signatories to the Treaty of Rarotonga, which prohibits nuclear weapons testing and deployment in the South Pacific.
Aukus has been criticised as the exploitation of a loophole in the Treaty of Rarotonga, which would technically permit “nuclear-powered” submarines, as Talei Mangioni told The Guardian.
Lesuma said nuclear power was a “short skip and a jump” from nuclear-armed submarines.
“We don’t stand for Aukus. We are against it. It’s a breach of trust, it’s a potential breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga despite what the fine print says.”
Similarly, he said those who supported the so-called ‘non-nuclear’ Pillar 2, should also be ashamed of themselves, and noted how New Zealand was still considering this despite widespread opposition reported by Te Ao Māori News.
He said the idea of “oceans of peace” was constantly mooted by his government in Fiji.
“Well, an ocean of peace is not one where nuclear submarines are allowed to sail through the Pacific to make insecure nations feel safer about a country in the east,” he said.
“There’s an element of racism that one can throw into this as well, that the Anglo West are insecure about China’s dominance.”
He said for the Pacific to be a true ocean of peace, it must be one free of geopolitical tension and not used as a maritime battleground for “insecure nations”.
Fukushima nuclear wastewater dumping
Lesuma also said Japan should stop its nuclear wastewater dumping from Fukushima. He said the ocean was already under an immense amount of pressure due to the climate crisis, sea level and ocean temperatures rising, plus the impacts on biodiversity and corals, pollution, microplastics in fish, and oil phishing.
“Why would we go and add 30 years of nuclear waste water?”
He said Pacific people weren’t fully consulted and were more or less told by Japan it was going to release the wastewater.
At the 53rd Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga there was no mention of the issue but Lesuma said PANG dispatched briefing papers to various government delegations, which were well received.
He thought the challenge they faced was that the bigger friends in the region, Australia and Aotearoa, didn’t come through for them.
The voice of dissent was much smaller, and at the forum the only vocal opponents were the Marshall Islands and the Solomon Islands. Lesuma alleged this had to do with how hard Australia worked to change some of the language to influence Pacific states.
While opposing the release, President Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands recognised the International Atomic Energy Authority as the authority that deemed the release safe. Although she was a voice of dissent, she said she didn’t feel they could change the decision made.
Financial vulnerability of the Pacific
While there was support from Pacific leaders, Lesuma said Japan had worked hard to win over Pacific states by taking advantage of their vulnerability.
Our greater security concern is not China and the US having this fight with us strapped in the middle. The greatest concern for the Pacific, is the climate crisis.
— Epeli Lesuma
Lesuma said the reality for the Pacific Islands was that they were under immense economic stress post-Covid and also due to climate-induced disasters. So their governments didn’t have a lot of space to negotiate when they needed financial assistance to build schools, homes, bridges, and infrastructure for climate resilience, he said.
On July 19, seafood industry newsletter Undercurrent News reported Japan was funding $3.17 million for a fisheries research centre in the Solomon Islands to promote self-sufficiency.
Two weeks before the forum met in Tonga, Tongan Prime Minister Hu’akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni and the Japanese Ambassador to Tonga HInagaki Hisao signed up to non-project grant assistance (NPGA) for provision of fire-fighting equipment.
The initiative is an addition to cooperation for recovery from the 2022 Hunga-Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai tsunami and volcanic eruption, to help advance capacity and capability in emergency response.
However, Lesuma said this only meant his organisation had to work extra hard to hold leaders to account and to push for a higher standard of science to be upheld.
Global experts say decision lacks sound scientific basis
He described the science being cited by TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company as questionable.
The forum had an independent expert panel of world-class scientists and global experts on nuclear issues. The panel consisted of:
- Dr Ken Buesseler - a senior scientist in marine chemistry and geochemistry, and Oceanographer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
- Dr Arjun Makhijani president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research; whose PhD in engineering specialised in nuclear fission
- Dr Anthony Hooker - Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Radiation Research, Education and Innovation at The University of Adelaide
- Dr. Ferenc Dalnoki-Veress - who worked at Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and is the Scientist-in-Residence & Adjunct Professor at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
- Dr Robert H. Richmond - Research Professor and Director at the Kewalo Marine Laboratory in the University of Hawaii
In 2023 the panel released its assessment of the data relating to Japan’s decision to discharge ALPS treated nuclear wastewater. The key finding was the decision was highly premature and lacked a sound scientific basis.
The panel declared the quantity and quality of data inadequate, incomplete, inconsistent and biased. Among the concerns, they said the accumulation on the sea floor and in marine food products needed to be considered; there was no urgency to release the water; and there were other alternatives.
“The long-term effects of this discharge on Pacific marine ecosystems and those who depend on them are still unknown. Even small doses of radiation can cause cancer or genetic damage,” panellist Robert Richmond told BenarNews, an online news service affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency is monitoring and surveilling the process and declared the release consistent with safety standards.
However, panellist Makhijani, who has had half a century of expertise, said the IAEA abandoned its responsibility to review the justification of actions, and called into question the veracity of the IAEA report.
Lesuma also alleged the IAEA couldn’t be trusted because Japan was a huge donor to the organisation. For instance, in 2022, Japan donated €2 million to IAEA for efforts in ensuring the safety of Ukranian nuclear facilities against an attack from Russia.
“There’s a web of handshaking, backscratching that’s taking place in the background,” Lesuma said. “So for civil society we need to advocate for higher science.”
Pacific News Service has reported accidents that “expose the chaos and disorder of TEPCO’s management”.
Days before the release in August 2023, TEPCO found leaks in a hose used to transfer the waste. In October that year, a week before the third round of release, two men were hospitalised after being splashed with radioactive liquid at the plant. And in February, this year, another nuclear waste leak of 5.5 tons of radioactive waste was reported.
We’re definitely being gaslit by TEPCO and Japan and they’re playing on the vulnerability of Pacific Island states.
— Epeli Lesuma
This is why many Fukushima residents do not trust the government or the scientists it hires (see Te Ao Maōri News story here) but it was, essentially, due to the silencing of people, denial of the impacts of ingesting radioactive food, the dismissal of rises in thyroid cancer in children, and the idea that radiation didn’t affect people who were happy and smiling.
Leaders versus community members
At PALM10 this year, Pacific leaders came to a consensus to support the Fukushima water dumping.
But ocean activist and former politician Sheila Babauta said of that: “I think it’s worth discussing that sometimes our government may not accurately reflect the stance of the community.”
Lesuma agreed and said a lot of governments and politicians made decisions based on needing funding support to build bridges, construct hospitals or for education.
Athough he agreed leaders had come to a consensus, some people didn’t support what Japan was doing.
“It’s almost like a reactivation of trauma and deceit that was imposed upon Pacific people in the time of colonialism, when the Americans, the British and the French said, ‘Everything is all right, your fish are safe to eat, you can continue living on your island.’”
Now, Lesuma said, Pacific peoples understood the tests and contamination were not safe, and people continued to suffer from those impacts to the present day.
“Who’s to say whether 30 years down the line our ocean will become so contaminated with nuclear radiation that we won’t even be able to eat fish from our ocean?”
“We’re definitely being gaslit by TEPCO and Japan and they’re playing on the vulnerability of Pacific island states.”
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown has been quoted saying the Fukushima wastewater dumping doesn’t breach the Treaty of Rarotonga. Lesuma said he was disappointed this quote overtook the forum because, before the wastewater was released, Brown had raised the issue that it might be a breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga and had been criticised for “back-flipping” his opinion.
Lesuma pointed out the Cook Islands also endorsed deep sea mining, another “desecration of the ocean”.
“If you can mine the ocean and pillage it for nodules at the bottom, it’s just an easy segue into allowing it to become a dump site for nuclear wastewater for the next 30 years.
There is still hope
Despite the threats of nuclear waste and maritime war in the Pacific, Lesuma remains hopeful.
“I’m an optimist,” he said, “Our generation, young people joining this movement of anti-nuclearism perhaps need to understand that things take time.”
He said in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s the nuclear-free and independent movement rallied together to push and advocate for a nuclear-free zone. From the movement came the treaty (1985) and it also put pressure on France to stop its nuclear tests, the last occurring in 1996.
The NFIP movement brought together Pacific Islanders and indigenous peoples in the past and Lesuma was confident it could happen again.
He hoped the nuclear waste dumping and Aukus could be pushed back against but he said it would take time and operated on various levels - some protesting, others putting pressure on political leaders, and others using social media to educate.
Pacific united and recalling Kīngi Tūheitia’s words
Lesuma said making these changes would take a lot of work and require Pacific people to unite when “so many things threaten to divide us”.
He said Pacific people was an all-encompassing term that included Māori and Aboriginal first nations but the size of the island didn’t matter - it was about the existence in the ocean.
He said he liked how the late Kīngi Tūheitia had said to be Māori every day. He said that saying also worked for Pacific Islanders to be proud to be Pacific Islanders.
Lesuma said he had a great admiration for King Tūheitia’s links to chiefly households of the Pacific.
There was a presentation made by the government of Fiji, and the orator praised Kīngi Tūheitia for bringing them together, and reconnecting the chiefs of the Pacific kin to remind everyone, “we are kin first”.
“I think that’s something that we have to remember, more importantly, in this era of division, and when our ocean, our sacred moana, is under immense threat from things external to us,” Lesuma said.