The Pacific Conference of Churches (PCC) addressed the Standing Committee of Foreign Affairs and Defence of the Parliament of Fiji in a statement earlier this year, with appreciation and support of Fiji’s ratification of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Since 1975, PCC has consistently advocated for a total ban of nuclear weapons. Extensive portions of the Pacific continue to be uninhabitable today, and remaining radioactive substances from the French tests will spill into the Pacific Ocean after what looks to be an imminent collapse of Morurua Atoll.

In the statement, PCC urged the committee to “to hear the cries of our communities who struggle to sing the Lord’s song as songs of freedom and justice in their own land.” It also renewed the call for “just reparation and compensation” as the Pacific people and environment continue to suffer from the extensive, permanent after-effects of nuclear experiments in their homelands. Victims of nuclear testing are marginalised and the impact on their health, degradation of their environment and pollution of their waters has been largely invisible or left un-addressed.