The report says for many months the government of France has been preparing for an atom bomb test explosion in the heart of the Algerian Sahara, perhaps to occur in early January. Independent African states have asked France to cancel these plans, and a United Nations resolution urged France to abandon bomb tests in Africa. An international protest team of 18 men and one woman left Accra, Ghana on December 6, equipped with jeeps, trucks, and other equipment to cross from Ghana through Upper Volta, Niger, French Sudan, and the Algerian Sahara to El Hammoudia (near Reggane) when the explosion of the French atomic bomb is scheduled to take place. On December 9, the Saharan Protest Team crossed...
The report says for many months the government of France has been preparing for an atom bomb test explosion in the heart of the Algerian Sahara, perhaps to occur in early January. Independent African states have asked France to cancel these plans, and a United Nations resolution urged France to abandon bomb tests in Africa. An international protest team of 18 men and one woman left Accra, Ghana on December 6, equipped with jeeps, trucks, and other equipment to cross from Ghana through Upper Volta, Niger, French Sudan, and the Algerian Sahara to El Hammoudia (near Reggane) when the explosion of the French atomic bomb is scheduled to take place. On December 9, the Saharan Protest Team crossed the Ghanian border and was stopped by French authorities 16 miles inside French territory, on orders from France. The team's leader is the Reverend Michael Scott; other members include Bayard Rustin, the U.S. Secretary of the War Resisters League; William Sutherland, U.S., former private secretary to K.A. Gbedemah, Ghana Finance Minister; Michael Randle, Chairman of the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear Weapons in Great Britain; Francis Hoyland, England, active in the world federalist movement; and Peter Martin, France, on the staff of UNESCO International Work Camp Program. Eleven Ghanaians, one Nigerian, and Ntsu Mokhehle, President of the Basutoland National Congress, complete the Team. All action will be taken openly and trustingly in the Ghandian spirit of a nonviolent attempt to effect needed change. The Protest Team is asking the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain to abandon all nuclear tests and weapons, without waiting for a joint agreement; that France and China abandon manufacturing nuclear weapons, regardless of the actions of the three nuclear powers; and that France not carry out nuclear bomb explosions in the Sahara or elsewhere. More information about the Sahara Protest Team can be secured from George Willoughby, Chairman of the Committee for Nonviolent Action. The report mentions the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear Weapons, the Uganda National Congress, Kwame Nkrumah, Rev. Martin Luther King, Martin Niemoellar, Lord Bertrand Russell, Linus Pauling, Sir Osei Agyeman-Prempeh, Jayaprakash Narayan, Lord Boyd Orr, Nii Tackie-Komey, Phillip Toynbee, A.J. Muste, the American Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the American Committee for Nonviolent Action.
