Feature story - 13 February, 2003
Marie-Thérèse Danielsson, who died earlier this week in Tahiti aged 79, was a key figure in the global campaign against French nuclear testing at Moruroa atoll. With her husband, the Swedish anthropologist Bengt Danielsson, she brought to millions of people the injustice and dangers of the nuclear testing programme in their book "Moruroa Mon Amour."
Bengt and Marie-Thérèse Danielsson
Marie-Thérèse was born in France, had lived in Sweden and
travelled widely, but her passion was for the people and
environment of Tahiti-Polynesia. She was a staunch friend and
supporter of Tahitian anti-nuclear and pro-independence activists
-- not an easy place to be in the heavily militarised, colonial
society of Tahiti in the 1960s. When the testing programme at
Moruroa ended in January 1996, she continued to campaign in Tahiti
and France for compensation and access to medical records for
Tahitian workers on the atoll.
Marie-Thérèse first joined Bengt in Tahiti when he was doing
anthropological work in a remote atoll in Tahiti-Polynesia after he
had completed the famous Kon Tiki raft voyage from South America to
French Polynesia. That experience, working in a community
unaffected by much of 20th century western civilisation was rudely
interrupted by de Gaulle's decision to use Moruroa as a test site
in the early 1960s. The economy, society and culture of Tahiti
underwent a violent shock with a flood of 20,000 military
personnel. Bengt and Marie-Thérèse documented this "tsunami" as
they called it, which irrevocably changed Tahiti and its
people.
Marie-Thérèse cared about people, first and foremost. She helped
create the space particularly for Tahitian women to speak out.
While Bengt lectured guests on the history of French colonialism in
Tahiti, she provided practical hospitality and friendship to an
international network of activists sharing her dream of a Nuclear
Free and Independent Pacific. Their home was always open to
visitors: the large library of books on Pacific cultures and
environment to pore over, fabulous meals, and a "visitor's bure" on
the edge of the lagoon at their house in Tahiti which was a haven
place for Greenpeace campaigners, Pacific activists, French
scientists and politicians and a whole host of globe-trotters. I
asked her once how she maintained her endless hospitality, her
capacity to give to others in spite of her own busy life of
activism and in latter years, Bengt's illness. She said simply,
"what goes around, comes around" -- that the goodness you give
eventually comes back to you.
I met Marie-Thérèse on my first ever day in Tahiti. New to
Greenpeace and new to Tahiti, I was feeling jetlagged and slightly
disoriented after arriving on a 2am flight into Papeete. After I'd
visited a few contacts in the anti-nuclear movement in Papeete, I
went to make a phone call in the Post Office. A mysterious man with
a camera followed me, trying to snap my picture. I suspected the
authorities knew I was an activist, and were either trying to get a
picture for their files, or simply wanted to intimidate me. I rang
Marie-Thérèse and asked if this was normal. "Yes," she said, "don't
worry. Just come out and have lunch with us and use the phone
here." For years the Danielssons had had their phone bugged and
their mail opened by one of the various intelligence forces that
operated in Tahiti. In spite of this harassment and torrents of
abuse from the pro-French local tabloids, the Danielssons
documented the lies and inconsistencies of the French authorities
about the impact of the tests on people's health, the state of the
vulnerable coral atolls after the underground blasts, and the
cover-ups of accidents at the test site.
Marie-Thérèse was also a founding member of the local Moruroa e
Tatou (Moruroa and Us) nuclear veterans association and of the
local section of the Women's International League for Freedom and
Peace (WILFP). Bengt and Marie-Thérèse were honoured in 1991 with
the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Peace Prize. She
is to be buried in Sweden.
Stephanie Mills
Nuclear Issue Co-ordinator
Greenpeace