Rainbow Warrior: Difference between revisions

File:Rainbow warrior.jpg

The Rainbow Warrior

Rainbow Warrior is the name of a series of ships operated by Greenpeace. The first ship was sunk by the French secret service (DGSE) in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on Template:Disaster. The current ship using the name was launched in 1989.

The first Rainbow Warrior

The first Rainbow Warrior, a craft of 40 metres and 418 tonnes, was originally the MAFF trawler Sir William Hardy, launched in 1955. She was acquired for £40,000 and was renovated over four months, then re-launched on April 29 1978 as Rainbow Warrior. She was named after a Native American prophecy. The engines were replaced in 1981 and the ship was converted with a ketch rig in 1985.

Rainbow Warrior was used as a support vessel for many Greenpeace protest activities against seal hunting, whaling and nuclear weapons testing during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In early 1985, she was in the Pacific campaigning against nuclear testing. At the begining of the year, she evacuated some Marshall Islanders who were living on an atoll polluted by radioactivity from past American nuclear tests.

She then travelled to New Zealand to lead a flotilla of yachts protesting against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia. During previous nuclear tests at Mururoa, protest ships had been boarded by French commandos after sailing inside the shipping exclusion zone around the atoll. For the 1985 tests, Greenpeace intended to monitor the impact of nuclear tests and place protesters on the island to do this. The French Government infiltrated the New Zealand organisation and discovered these plans.

New Zealand under Labour Party Prime Minister David Lange had recently banned nuclear vessels from her ports. As a result America was withdrawing its obligation to defend New Zealand under the ANZUS treaty.

Rainbow Warrior was sabotaged and sunk just before midnight on July 10, 1985 by two explosive devices attached to the hull by operatives of French intelligence (DGSE). Of the twelve people on board, one, photographer Fernando Pereira, drowned when he attempted to retrieve his equipment (see also Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior).

The New Zealand Police immediately initiated a murder inquiry into the sinking. With the assistance of the New Zealand public, and an intense media focus, the police quickly established the movements of the bombers. On July 12, two of the six bombers who had operated under orders were found and arrested. At trial they pled guilty to manslaughter, and were eventually sentenced to a maximum of 5 years imprisonment. Most of the others were identified, and three were interviewed by the New Zealand Police on Norfolk Island, where they had escaped in the yacht Ouvea. They were not arrested due to lack of evidence. Ouvea subsequently sailed ostensibly for Nouméa, but was scuttled en route. Most of the agents remained in French government service.

In June 1986, in a political deal with David Lange and presided over by the United Nations Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, France agreed to pay compensation of NZ$13 million (US$6.5 million) to New Zealand and 'apologise', in return for which Mafart and Prieur would be detained at the French military base on Hao atoll for three years.

However, the two spies were both free by May 1988, after less than two years had elapsed, Mafart having been smuggled out.

In 1987, under heavy international pressure, the French government paid $8.16 million compensation to Greenpeace. In 2005, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, head of DGSE at the time, admitted that the death weighed heavily on his conscience, and said the aim of the operation had not been to kill. He acknowledged the existence of three teams: the crew of the yacht, reconnaissance and logistics (those successfully prosecuted), plus a three-man team that carried out the actual bombing, and who have never been publicly identified[1]. On the twentieth anniversary of the sinking, it was also revealed that the French president François Mitterrand himself had given authorisation for the bombing[2].

Rainbow Warrior was refloated on August 21, 1985 and moved to a naval harbour for forensic examination. Although the hull had been recovered, the damage was too extensive for economic repair and the vessel was scuttled in Matauri Bay, Cavalli Islands on December 2, 1987, to serve as a dive wreck and fish sanctuary. The move was seen as a fitting end for the vessel.

The current Rainbow Warrior

The current Rainbow Warrior is a schooner (sailing ship) with three masts that was built from the hull of the deep sea fishing ship Grampian Fame. Built in Yorkshire and launched in 1957 she was originally 44 metres long and powered by steam. She was extended to 55.2 m in 1966. Greenpeace gave the vessel new masts, gaff rigged, a new engine and a number of environmentally low-impact systems to handle waste, heating and hot water. She was officially launched in Hamburg on July 10 1989, the anniversary of the sinking of her predecessor.

The name

The name Rainbow Warrior comes from a Native American prophecy of the "Warriors of the Rainbow", keepers of the legend, stories, culture rituals, and myths, and all the ancient tribal customs. These warriors, who would be mankind's key to survival, are prophesized to appear at a dark time when the fish would die in the streams, the birds would fall from the air, the waters would be blackened, and the trees would no longer be; mankind as we know it would all but cease to exist.

External links

• http://www.greenpeace.org.au/rainbow_warrior/index.html
• 20th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior
• specification of the Rainbow Warrior
• The Rainbow Warrior Affair
• Police report on Operation Wharf, the Rainbow Warrior homicide inquiry
• Felling of a Warrior, 15 July 2005, The Guardian - article on 20th anniversary of Rainbow Warrior bombing including updates on further devopments in case.