The legacy of the Rainbow Warrior

Saturday 10 July was the 25th anniversary of the 1985 sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior by French Secret Service agents in Auckland, New Zealand.

But while the ship’s captain Peter Willcox attended an anniversary ceremony in Poland to mark the building of a new Rainbow Warrior, the bigger story still lingers.

What Greenpeace was protesting against all those years ago was French nuclear testing in the Pacific. This has stopped, but the deadly after-effects that they predicted remain.

The sinking

The Rainbow Warrior – Greenpeace’s flagship vessel – was in Auckland preparing to lead a flotilla of yachts up to the French Polynesian nuclear testing site of Mururoa Atoll.

As a fitting host, the New Zealand government had only months earlier declared their opposition to all nuclear activities, including a ban on any nuclear-powered vessels in their waters.

For the French, this made for an attractive target.

While the boat was tied to a wharf in Auckland harbour, French divers attached two mines to its hull. The first was designed to scare the crew safely off the boat before the second was detonated ten minutes later.

At about 11.45pm on 10 July, the first mine went off. However, the confused crew didn’t fully evacuate.

When the second mine exploded, Portuguese photographer Fernando Pereira was trapped in his room and drowned when the boat went down. The other ten crew members escaped.

Four of the agents fled the country after the attack. But agents Alain Marfart and Dominique Prieur – posing as a Swiss couple – were caught at the New Zealand border with fake Swiss passports.

They were imprisoned after pleading guilty to manslaughter.

The incident created an intense standoff between the governments of New Zealand and France, with trade bans being threatened on both sides.

In the end, France apologised to New Zealand, paying them $13 million and $8 million to Greenpeace.

In return, the prisoners were allowed to serve their ten-year sentences in French Polynesia, where they were released after only two years.

It was a rare proven case of government terrorism that was revealed later to have been ordered by France’s President Francois Mitterrand.

The idea was to stop Greenpeace’s protests so that testing could continue and any impact on the locals would be kept quiet.

France and the United States had been testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific since World War Two – the US in the Marshall Islands and France in French Polynesia.

Greenpeace correctly predicted that radiation from the explosions would have serious long-term health effects on the local populations.

The Marshall Islands

In 1944, the Marshall Islands were won off the Japanese by the invading Americans. Between 1946 and 1958, America proceeded to test 67 nuclear weapons in the islands.

However, it was the 1954 Castle Bravo bomb detonated on Bikini Atoll – a thousand times more powerful than Hiroshima – that caused the most damage.

A study was done by the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) called ‘Project 4.1’ to determine the effects of Castle Bravo on the closest inhabitants on the islands 125 miles away and treat those needing help.

Heavy contamination was revealed which America claimed was an accident. However, accusations were made that the AEC deliberately exposed the locals to the radiation to observe the effects.

Such effects included death, birth defects and illnesses such as cancer. The bombs had emitted 150 times more radiation than the nuclear disaster in Chernobyl in 1986.

America consequently paid US$270 million to the victims, insisting it was a full and final settlement. It also decontaminated the various atolls to ensure they could be inhabited again.

Now the Marshall Islands’ new government claims that the compensation was not enough, given the serious health and land problems.

They have threatened to switch allegiance to China if adequate payment isn’t made, threatening the billions the US has committed in missile defence equipment on the islands.

Mururoa

France tested almost 200 nuclear weapons in the French Polynesian atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa between 1966 and 1996.

Locals claim the tests have resulted in the region’s chronic levels of leukaemia and cancer. They say they’re getting over 600 related cases of cancer each year and 250 deaths.

Last year France finally admitted responsibility for the health problems and has agreed to pay compensation.

However, it has only set aside $14 million (compared to America’s $1.4 billion) and most of it will go to French servicemen. The Polynesians may receive little, although they are part of the 150,000 “theoretical” victims.

In looking back at what the Rainbow Warrior achieved in both its protests and its high-profile demise, it brought to light an unjust practice in the Pacific that affected people with little or no global voice.

That, rather than its sensational sinking, is the true legacy of the Rainbow Warrior.

By The Casual Truth