Bruno Barrillot

Bruno Barrillot (9 April 1940 — 25 March 2017) was a French whistleblower and anti-nuclear activist, specialized in monitoring nuclear weapons and nuclear power. He wrote several works on the consequences of nuclear testing in the Algerian Sahara and French Polynesia. He was co-founder of the Armaments Observatory in 1984. He was also co-founder of AVEN (Association of Nuclear Test Veterans) on 9 June 2001.

Biography Barrillot was born in Lyon in France. He studied philosophy and theology at the Catholic University of Lyon, before becoming a Catholic priest and chaplain of the rural Christian youth movement in the diocese of Lyon from 1972 to 1985. In 1979 he and another priest, Léon Desbos, were prosecuted for the return of their military records in order to support a conscientious objector on trial and the local people in the Fight for the Larzac. They were sentenced to a suspended fine of 500 francs. He broke with the French Catholic Church in the mid-1980s, believing that its institutional positions over the NATO Double-Track Decision were "too timid". However, he remained close to the Archbishop of Lyon, for whom he followed the files of the pacifist movements. he founded the Center for Documentation and Research on Peace and Conflict (CDRPC), which he directed from 1985 to 2005, At the time, "no cancer or leukemia register was then kept and the archives of local hospitals were repatriated to France where they are not accessible". On his return to France, he received various support, notably from John Doom, director of the Pacific office of the World Council of Churches, Madeleen Helmer and the Polynesian pastor Taarii Maraea. Dismissed during Gaston Flosse's return to power, he became assistant to Senator Richard Tuheiava (2013-2014). He was recalled to the post of delegate in 2016 by Édouard Fritch. He called into question "the cleanliness of the 193 French nuclear tests carried out in the Pacific between 1960 and 1996".