REVIEW: By Amit Sarwal of The Australia Today

Forty years after the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour, award-winning journalist and author David Robie has revisited the ship’s fateful last mission — a journey that became a defining chapter in New Zealand’s identity as a nuclear-free nation.

Robie’s newly updated book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, is both a historical record and a contemporary warning.

It captures the courage of those who stood up to nuclear colonialism in the Pacific and draws striking parallels with the existential challenges the region now faces — from climate change to renewed geopolitical tensions.

“The new edition has a completely new 40-page section covering the last decade and the transition in global emphasis from ‘nuclear to climate crisis survivors’, plus new exposés about the French spy ‘blunderwatergate’. Ironically, the nuclear risks have also returned to the fore again,” Robie told The Australia Today.

“The book deals with a lot of critical issues impacting on the Pacific, and is expanded a lot and quite different from the last edition in 2015.”

In May 1985, the Rainbow Warrior embarked on a humanitarian mission unlike any before it. The crew helped 320 Rongelap Islanders relocate to a safer island after decades of radioactive contamination from US nuclear testing at Bikini and Enewetak atolls.

Robie, who joined the ship in Hawai’i as a journalist, recalls the deep humanity of that voyage.

Humanitarian voyage
“The fact that this was a humanitarian voyage . . .  helping the people of Rongelap in the Marshall Islands, it was going to be quite momentous,” he told Pacific Media Network News.

“It’s incredible for an island community where the land is so much part of their existence, their spirituality and their ethos.”

The relocation was both heartbreaking and historic. Islanders dismantled their homes over three days, leaving behind everything except their white-stone church.

“I remember one older woman sitting on the deck among the remnants of their homes,” Robie recalls.

“That image has never left me.”

Their ship’s banner, Nuclear Free Pacific, fluttered as both a declaration and a demand. The Rainbow Warrior became a symbol of Pacific solidarity, linking environmentalism with human rights in a region scarred by the atomic age.

On 10 July 1985, the Rainbow Warrior was docked at Auckland’s Marsden Wharf when two underwater bombs tore through its hull. The explosions, planted by French secret agents, sank the vessel and killed Portuguese-Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira.

Bombing shockwaves
The bombing sent shockwaves through New Zealand and the world. When French Prime Minister Laurent Fabius finally admitted that his country’s intelligence service had carried out the attack, outrage turned to defiance. New Zealand’s resolve to remain nuclear-free only strengthened.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark contributes a new prologue to the 40th anniversary edition, reflecting on the meaning of the bombing and the enduring relevance of the country’s nuclear-free stance.

“The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior and the death of Fernando Pereira was both a tragic and a seminal moment in the long campaign for a nuclear-free Pacific,” she writes.

“It was so startling that many of us still remember where we were when the news came through.”

Clark warns that history’s lessons are being forgotten. “Australia’s decision to enter a nuclear submarine purchase programme with the United States is one of those storm clouds gathering,” she writes.

“New Zealand should be a voice for de-escalation, not for enthusiastic expansion of nuclear submarine fleets in the Pacific.”

Clark’s message in the prologue is clear: the values that shaped New Zealand’s independent foreign policy in the 1980s — diplomacy, peace and disarmament — must not be abandoned in the face of modern power politics.

Geopolitical threats
Robie adds that the book also explores “the geopolitical threats to the region with unresolved independence issues, such as the West Papuan self-determination struggle in Melanesia.”

Clark’s call to action, Robie told The Australia Today, resonates with the Pacific’s broader fight for justice.

“She warns against AUKUS and calls for the country to ‘link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace, which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence.’”

When Eyes of Fire was first published, it instantly became a rallying point for young activists and journalists across the Pacific. Robie’s reporting — which earned him New Zealand’s Media Peace Prize 40 years ago — revealed the human toll of nuclear testing and state-sponsored secrecy.

Today, his new edition reframes that struggle within the context of climate change, which he describes as “the new existential crisis for Pacific peoples.” He sees the same forces of denial, delay, and power imbalance at play.

“This whole renewal of climate denialism, refusal by major states to realise that the solutions are incredibly urgent, and the United States up until recently was an important part of that whole process about facing up to the climate crisis,” Robie says.

“It’s even more important now for activism, and also for the smaller countries that are reasonably progressive, to take the lead.”

For Robie, Eyes of Fire is not just a history book — it’s a call to conscience.

“I hope it helps to inspire others, especially younger people, to get out there and really take action,” he says.

“The future is in your hands.”

The Rainbow Warrior returned to Aotearoa in July to mark the 40th anniversary of the bombing. Forty years on, the story of the Rainbow Warrior continues to burn — not as a relic of the past, but as a beacon for the Pacific’s future through Robie’s Eyes of Fire.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Join us for this guided “virtual tour” around the Rainbow Warrior III in Auckland Harbour on the afternoon of 10 July 2025 — the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the original flagship.

The Rainbow Warrior is a special vessel — it’s one of three present-day Greenpeace ships.

The Rainbow Warrior works on the biggest issues affecting the future of our planet. It was the first ship in our fleet that was designed and built specifically for activism at sea.

Virtual tour of the Rainbow Warrior.        Video: Greenpeace

It also represents a continuation of the legacy of the previous two Rainbow Warriors.

On this anniversary day we explored the ship and talked to key people about the current campaign to protect the world’s oceans.

Programmes director Niamh O’Flynn presented the tour, starting on Halsey Wharf.

Thanks to third mate Adriana, oceans campaigner Ellie; author David Robie, who sailed on the original Rainbow Warrior on the 1985 Rongelap relocation mission and whose new anniversary edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior is being launched tonight, radio engineer Neil and Captain Ali!

Watch the commemoration ceremony this morning on 10 July 2025.

More information and make donations.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark warned activists and campaigners in a speech on the deck of the Greenpeace environmental flagship Rainbow Warrior III last night to be wary of global “storm clouds” and the renewed existential threat of nuclear weapons.

Speaking on her reflections on four decades after the bombing of the original Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985, she said that New Zealand had a lot to be proud of but the world was now in a “precarious” state.

Clark praised Greenpeace over its long struggle, challenging the global campaigners to keep up the fight for a nuclear-free Pacific.

“For New Zealand, having been proudly nuclear-free since the mid-1980s, life has got a lot more complicated for us as well, and I have done a lot of campaigning against New Zealand signing up to any aspect of the AUKUS arrangement because it seems to me that being associated with any agreement that supplies nuclear ship technology to Australia is more or less encouraging the development of nuclear threats in the South Pacific,” she said.

“While I am not suggesting that Australians are about to put nuclear weapons on them, we know that others do. This is not the Pacific that we want.

“It is not the Pacific that we fought for going back all those years.

“So we need to be very concerned about these storm clouds gathering.”

Lessons for humanity
Clark was prime minister 1999-2008 and served as a minister in David Lange’s Labour government that passed New Zealand’s nuclear-free legislation in 1987 – two years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by French secret agents.

She was also head of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in 2009-2017.

“When you think 40 years on, humanity might have learned some lessons. But it seems we have to repeat the lessons over and over again, or we will be dragged on the path of re-engagement with those who use nuclear weapons as their ultimate defence,” Clark told the Greenpeace activists, crew and guests.

“Forty years on, we look back with a lot of pride, actually, at how New Zealand responded to the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. We stood up with the passage of the nuclear-free legislation in 1987, we stood up with a lot of things.

“All of this is under threat; the international scene now is quite precarious with respect to nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat.”

Nuclear-free Pacific reflections with Helen Clark         Video: Greenpeace

In response to Tahitian researcher and advocate Ena Manuireva who spoke earlier about the legacy of a health crisis as a result of 30 years of French nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa, she recalled her own thoughts.

“It reminds us of why we were so motivated to fight for a nuclear-free Pacific because we remember the history of what happened in French Polynesia, in the Marshall Islands, in the South Australian desert, at Maralinga, to the New Zealand servicemen who were sent up in the navy ships, the Rotoiti and the Pukaki, in the late 1950s, to stand on deck while the British exploded their bombs [at Christmas Island in what is today Kiribati].

“These poor guys were still seeking compensation when I was PM with the illnesses you [Ena] described in French Polynesia.

Testing ground for ‘others’
“So the Pacific was a testing ground for ‘others’ far away and I remember one of the slogans in the 1970s and 1980s was ‘if it is so safe, test them in France’. Right? It wasn’t so safe.

“Mind you, they regarded French Polynesia as France.

“David Robie asked me to write the foreword to the new edition of his book, Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, and it brought back so many memories of those times because those of you who are my age will remember that the 1980s were the peak of the Cold War.

“We had the Reagan administration [in the US] that was actively preparing for war. It was a terrifying time. It was before the demise of the Soviet Union. And nuclear testing was just part of that big picture where people were preparing for war.

“I think that the wonderful development in New Zealand was that people knew enough to know that we didn’t want to be defended by nuclear weapons because that was not mutually assured survival — it was mutually assured destruction.”

New Zealand took a stand, Clark said, but taking that stand led to the attack on the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour by French state-backed terrorism where tragically Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira lost his life.

“I remember I was on my way to Nairobi for a conference for women, and I was in Zimbabwe, when the news came through about the bombing of a boat in Auckland harbour.

‘Absolutely shocking’
“It was absolutely shocking, we had never experienced such a thing. I recall when I returned to New Zealand, [Prime Minister] David Lange one morning striding down to the party caucus room and telling us before it went public that it was without question that French spies had planted the bombs and the rest was history.

“It was a very tense time. Full marks to Greenpeace for keeping up the struggle for so long — long before it was a mainstream issue Greenpeace was out there in the Pacific taking on nuclear testing.

“Different times from today, but when I wrote the foreword for David’s book I noted that storm clouds were gathering again around nuclear weapons and issues. I suppose that there is so much else going on in a tragic 24 news cycle — catastrophe day in and day out in Gaza, severe technology and lethal weapons in Ukraine killing people, wherever you look there are so many conflicts.

“The international agreements that we have relied are falling into disrepair. For example, if I were in Europe I would be extremely worried about the demise of the intermediate range missile weapons pact which has now been abandoned by the Americans and the Russians.

“And that governs the deployment of medium range missiles in Europe.

“The New Start Treaty, which was a nuclear arms control treaty between what was the Soviet Union and the US expires next year. Will it be renegotiated in the current circumstances? Who knows?”

With the Non-proliferation Treaty, there are acknowledged nuclear powers who had not signed the treaty — “and those that do make very little effort to live up to the aspiration, which is to negotiate an end to nuclear weapons”.

Developments with Iran
“We have seen recently the latest developments with Iran, and for all of Iran’s many sins let us acknowledge that it is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty,” she said.

“It did subject itself, for the most part, to the inspections regime. Israel, which bombed it, is not a party to the treaty, and doesn’t accept inspections.

“There are so many double standards that people have long complained about the Non-Proliferation Treaty where the original five nuclear powers are deemed okay to have them, somehow, whereas there are others who don’t join at all.

“And then over the Ukraine conflict we have seen worrying threats of the use of nuclear weapons.”

Clark warned that we the use of artificial intelligence it would not be long before asking it: “How do I make a nuclear weapon?”

“It’s not so difficult to make a dirty bomb. So we should be extremely worried about all these developments.”

Then Clark spoke about the “complications” facing New Zealand.

Teariki’s message to De Gaulle
In his address, Ena Manuireva started off by quoting the late Tahitian parliamentarian John Teariki who had courageously appealed to General Charles De Gaulle in 1966 after France had already tested three nuclear devices:

“No government has ever had the honesty or the cynical frankness to admit that its nuclear tests might be dangerous. No government has ever hesitated to make other peoples — preferably small, defenceless ones — bear the burden.”

“May you, Mr President, take back your troops, your bombs, and your planes.

“Then, later, our leukemia and cancer patients would not be able to accuse you of being the cause of their illness.

“Then, our future generations would not be able to blame you for the birth of monsters and deformed children.

“Then, you would give the world an example worthy of France . . .

“Then, Polynesia, united, would be proud and happy to be French, and, as in the early days of Free France, we would all once again become your best and most loyal friends.”

‘Emotional moment’
Manuireva said that 10 days earlier, he had been on board Rainbow Warrior III for the ceremony to mark the bombing in 1985 that cost the life of Fernando Pereira – “and the lives of a lot of Mā’ohi people”.

“It was a very emotional moment for me. It reminded me of my mother and father as I am a descendant of those on Mangareva atoll who were contaminated by those nuclear tests.

“My mum died of lung cancer and the doctors said that she was a ‘passive smoker’. My mum had not smoked for the last 65 years.

“French nuclear testing started on 2 July 1966 with Aldebaran and lasted 30 years.”

He spoke about how the military “top brass fled the island” when winds start blowing towards Mangareva. “Food was ready but they didn’t stay”.

“By the time I was born in December 1967 in Mangareva, France had already exploded 9 atmospheric nuclear tests on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, about 400km from Mangareva.”

France’s most powerful explosion was Canopus with 2.6 megatonnes in August 1968. It was a thermonuclear hydrogen bomb — 150 times more powerful than Hiroshima.

‘Poisoned gift’
Manuireva said that by France “gifting us the bomb”, Tahitians had been left “with all the ongoing consequences on the people’s health costs that the Ma’ohi Nui government is paying for”.

He described how the compensation programme was inadequate, lengthy and complicated.

Manuireva also spoke about the consequences for the environment. Both Moruroa and Fangataufa were condemned as “no go” zones and islanders had lost their lands forever.

He also noted that while France had gifted the former headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (CEP) as a “form of reconciliation” plans to turn it into a museum were thwarted because the building was “rife with asbestos”.

“It is a poisonous gift that will cost millions for the local government to fix.”

Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman spoke of the impact on the Greenpeace organisation of the French secret service bombing of their ship and also introduced the guest speakers and responded to their statements.

A Q and A session was also held to round off the stimulating evening.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Forty years ago today, French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace campaign flagship  Rainbow Warrior in an attempt to stop the environmental organisation’s protest against nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll in Mā’ohi Nui.

People gathered on board Rainbow Warrior III to remember photographer Fernando Pereira, who was killed in the attack, and to honour the legacy of those who stood up to nuclear testing in the Pacific.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before the bombing was Operation Exodus, a humanitarian mission to the Marshall Islands. There, Greenpeace helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing.

The dawn ceremony was hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and attended by more than 150 people. Speeches were followed by the laying of a wreath and a moment of silence.

Tui Warmenhoven (Ngāti Porou), the chair of the Greenpeace Aotearoa board, said it was a day to remember for the harm caused by the French state against the people of Mā’ohi Nui.

Warmenhoven worked for 20 years in iwi research and is a grassroots, Ruatoria-based community leader who works to integrate mātauranga Māori with science to address climate change in Te Tai Rāwhiti.

She encouraged Māori to stand united with Greenpeace.

“Ko te mea nui ki a mātou, a Greenpeace Aotearoa, ko te whawhai i ngā mahi tūkino a rātou, te kāwanatanga, ngā rangatōpū, me ngā tāngata whai rawa, e patu ana i a mātou, te iwi Māori, ngā iwi o te ao, me ō mātou mātua, a Ranginui rāua ko Papatūānuku,” e ai ki a Warmenhoven.

A defining moment in Aotearoa’s nuclear-free stand
“The bombing of the Rainbow Warrior was a defining moment for Greenpeace in its willingness to fight for a nuclear-free world,” said Dr Russel Norman, the executive director of Greenpeace Aotearoa.

He noted it was also a defining moment for Aotearoa in the country’s stand against the United States and France, who conducted nuclear tests in the region.

In 1987, the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act officially declared the country a nuclear-free zone.

This move angered the United States, especially due to the ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships entering New Zealand ports.

Because the US followed a policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons, it saw the ban as breaching the ANZUS Treaty and suspended its security commitments to New Zealand.

The Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage before it was bombed was Operation Exodus, during which the crew helped relocate more than 320 residents of Rongelap Atoll in the Marshall Islands, who had been exposed to radiation from US nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

The legacy of Operation Exodus
Between 1946 and 1958, the United States carried out 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.

For decades, it denied the long-term health impacts, even as cancer rates rose and children were born with severe deformities.

Despite repeated pleas from the people of Rongelap to be evacuated, the US government failed to act until Greenpeace stepped in to help.

“The United States government effectively used them as guinea pigs for nuclear testing and radiation to see what would happen to people, which is obviously outrageous and disgusting,” Dr Norman said.

He said it was important not to see Pacific peoples as victims, as they were powerful campaigners who played a leading role in ending nuclear testing in the region.

Between March and April this year, Rainbow Warrior III returned to the Marshall Islands to conduct independent research into the radiation levels across the islands to see whether it’s safe for the people of Rongelap to return.

What advice do you give to this generation about nuclear issues?
“Kia kotahi ai koutou ki te whai i ngā mahi uaua i mua i a mātou ki te whawhai i a rātou mā, e mahi tūkino ana ki tō mātou ao, ki tō mātou kōkā a Papatūānuku, ki tō mātou taiao,” hei tā Tui Warmenhoven.

A reminder to stay united in the difficult world ahead in the fight against threats to the environment.

Warmenhoven also encouraged Māori to support Greenpeace Aotearoa.

Dr Norman believed the younger generations should be inspired to activism by the bravery of those from the Pacific and Greenpeace who campaigned for a nuclear-free world 40 years ago.

“They were willing to take very significant risks, they sailed their boats into the nuclear test zone to stop those nuclear tests, they were arrested by the French, beaten up by French commandos,” he said.

Republished from Te Ao Māori News with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A journalist who was on the Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap last night condemned France for its “callous” attack of an environmental ship, saying “we haven’t forgotten, or forgiven this outrage”.

David Robie, the author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, said at the launch that the consequences of almost 300 US and French nuclear tests – many of them “dirty bombs” — were still impacting on indigenous Pacific peoples 40 years after the bombing of the ship.

French saboteurs had killed “our shipmate Fernando Pereira” on 10 July 1985 in what the New Zealand prime minister at the time, David Lange, called a “sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.

Although relations with France had perhaps mellowed over time, four decades ago there was a lot of hostility towards the country, Dr Robie said.

“And that act of mindless sabotage still rankles very deeply in our psyche,” he said at the launch in Auckland Central’s Ellen Melville Centre on the anniversary of July 10.

About 100 people gathered in the centre’s Pioneer Women’s Hall for the book launch as Dr Robie reflected on the case of state terrorism after Greenpeace earlier in the day held a memorial ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III.

“One of the celebrated French newspapers, Le Monde, played a critical role in the investigation into the Rainbow Warrior affair — what I brand as ‘Blundergate’, in view of all the follies of the bumbling DGSE spy team,” he said.

Plantu cartoon
“And one of the cartoons in that newspaper, by Plantu, who is a sort of French equivalent to Michael Leunig, caught my eye.

“You will notice it in the background slide show behind me. It shows François Mitterrand, the president of the French republic at the time, dressed in a frogman’s wetsuit lecturing to school children during a history lesson.

“President Mitterrand says, in French, ‘At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism!’

He noticed that in the Mitterrand cartoon there was a “classmate” sitting in the back of the room with a moustache. This was none other than Edwy Plenel, the police reporter for Le Monde at the time, who scooped the world with hard evidence of Mitterrand and the French government’s role at the highest level in the Rainbow Warrior sabotage.

Dr Robie said that Plenel now published the investigative website Mediapart, which had played a key role in 2015 revealing the identity of the bomber that night, “the man who had planted the limpet mines on the Rainbow Warrior — sinking a peace and environmental ship, and killing Fernando Pereira.”

Jean-Luc Kister, a retired French colonel and DGSE secret agent, had confessed to his role and “apologised”, claiming the sabotage operation was “disproportionate and a mistake”.

“Was he sincere? Was it a genuine attempt to come to terms with his conscience. Who knows?” Dr Robie said, adding that he was unconvinced.

French perspective
Dr Robie said he had asked Plenel for his reflections from a French perspective 40 years on. Plenel cited three main take ways.

“First, the vital necessity of independent journalism. Independent of all powers, whether state, economic or ideological. Journalism that serves the public interest, the right to know, and factual truths.

“Impactful journalism whose revelations restore confidence in democracy, in the possibility of improving it, and in the usefulness of counterbalancing powers, particularly journalism.”

Secondly, this attack had been carried out by France in an “allied country”, New Zealand, against a civil society organisation. This demonstrated that “the thirst for power is a downfall that leads nations astray when they succumb to it.

“Nuclear weapons epitomise this madness, this catastrophe of power.”

Finally, Plenel expressed the “infinite sadness” for a French citizen that after his revelations in Le Monde — which led to the resignations of the defence minister and the head of the secret services — nothing else happened.

“Nothing at all. No parliamentary inquiry, no questioning of François Mitterrand about his responsibility, no institutional reform of the absolute power of the president in a French republic that is, in reality, an elective monarchy.”

‘Elective monarchy’ trend
Dr Robie compared the French outcome with the rapid trend in US today, “a president who thinks he is a monarch, a king – another elective monarchy.”

He also bemoaned that “catastrophe of power” that “reigns everywhere today – from the horrendous Israeli genocide in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu, and so many others.”

The continuous Gaza massacres were a shameful indictment of the West that had allowed it to happen for more than 21 months.

Dr Robie thanked many collaborators for their help and support, including drama teacher Hilari Anderson, an original crew member of the Rainbow Warrior, and photographer John Miller, “who have been with me all the way on this waka journey”.

He thanked his wife, Del, and family members for their unstinting “patience and support”, and also publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press.

Launching the book, Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn said one thing that had stood out for her was how the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior had continued despite the attempt by the French government to shut it down 40 years ago.

“We said then that ‘you can’t sink a rainbow’, and we went on to prove it.

“When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, it was getting ready to set sail to Moruroa Atoll, to enter the test exclusion zone and confront French nuclear testing head-on.”

So threatened
The French government had felt so threatened by that action that it had engaged in a state-sanctioned terror attack to prevent the mission from going ahead.

“But we rebuilt, and the Rainbow Warrior II carried on with that mission, travelling to Moruroa three times before the French finally stopped nuclear testing in the Pacific.

“That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her,” she said.

“It was the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap before the bombing that is the focus of David Robie’s book, and in many ways, it was an incredibly unique experience for Greenpeace — not just here in Aotearoa, but internationally.

“And of course David was a key part in that.”

O’Flynn said that as someone who had not even been born yet when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, “I am so grateful that the generation of nuclear-free activists took the time to pass on their knowledge and to build our organisation into what it is today.

“Just as David has by writing down his story and leaving us with such a rich legacy.”

Other speakers
Among other speakers at the book launch were teacher Hilari Anderson, publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press, Ena Manuireva, a Mangarevian scholar and cultural adviser, and MC Antony Phillips of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

Anderson spoke of the Warrior’s early campaigns and acknowledged the crews of 1978 and 1985.

“I have been reflecting what these first and last crews of the original Rainbow Warrior had in common, realising that both gave their collective, mostly youthful energy — to transformation.

“This has involved the bonding of crews by working hands-on together. Touching surfaces, by hammer and paint, created a physical connection to this beloved boat.”

She paid special tribute to two powerful women, Denise Bell, who tracked down the marine research vessel in Aberdeen that became the Rainbow Warrior, and the indomitable Susi Newborn, who “contributed to naming the ship and mustering a crew”.

Manuireva spoke about his nuclear colonial experience and that of his family as natives of Mangareva atoll, about 400 km from Muroroa atoll, where France conducted most of its 30 years of tests ending in 1995.

He also spoke of Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru’s pioneering role in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, and played haunting Tahitian songs on his guitar.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

Heroes of our age
The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

We the people of the Pacific
We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

“This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

You cannot sink a rainbow.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A new report on the United States nuclear weapons testing legacy in the Marshall Islands highlights the lack of studies into important health concerns voiced by Marshallese for decades that make it impossible to have a clear understanding of the impacts of the 67 nuclear weapons tests.

The Legacy of US Nuclear Testing in the Marshall Islands, a report by Dr Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, was released late last month.

The report was funded by Greenpeace Germany and is an outgrowth of the organisation’s flagship vessel, Rainbow Warrior III, visiting the Marshall Islands from March to April to recognise the 40th anniversary of the resettlement of the nuclear test-affected population of Rongelap Atoll.

Dr Mahkijani said that among the “many troubling aspects” of the legacy is that the United States had concluded, in 1948, after three tests, that the Marshall Islands was not “a suitable site for atomic experiments” because it did not meet the required meteorological criteria.

“Yet testing went on,” he said.

“Also notable has been the lack of systematic scientific attention to the accounts by many Marshallese of severe malformations and other adverse pregnancy outcomes like stillbirths. This was despite the documented fallout throughout the country and the fact that the potential for fallout to cause major birth defects has been known since the 1950s.”

Dr Makhijani highlights the point that, despite early documentation in the immediate aftermath of the 1954 Bravo hydrogen bomb test and numerous anecdotal reports from Marshallese women about miscarriages and still births, US government medical officials in charge of managing the nuclear test-related medical programme in the Marshall Islands never systematically studied birth anomalies.

Committed billions of dollars
The US Deputy Secretary of State in the Biden-Harris administration, Kurt Cambell, said that Washington, over decades, had committed billions of dollars to the damages and the rebuilding of the Marshall Islands.

“I think we understand that that history carries a heavy burden, and we are doing what we can to support the people in the [Compact of Free Association] states, including the Marshall Islands,” he told reporters at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Nuku’alofa last year.

“This is not a legacy that we seek to avoid. We have attempted to address it constructively with massive resources and a sustained commitment.”

Among points outlined in the new report:

• Gamma radiation levels at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, officially considered a “very low exposure” atoll, were tens of times, and up to 300 times, more than background in the immediate aftermaths of the thermonuclear tests in the Castle series at Bikini Atoll in 1954.
• Thyroid doses in the so-called “low exposure atolls” averaged 270 milligray (mGy), 60 percent more than the 50,000 people of Pripyat near Chernobyl who were evacuated (170 mGy) after the 1986 accident there, and roughly double the average thyroid exposures in the most exposed counties in the United States due to testing at the Nevada Test Site.

Despite this, “only a small fraction of the population has been officially recognised as exposed enough for screening and medical attention; even that came with its own downsides, including people being treated as experimental subjects,” the report said.

Women reported adverse outcomes
“In interviews and one 1980s country-wide survey, women have reported many adverse pregnancy outcomes,” said the report.

“They include stillbirths, a baby with part of the skull missing and ‘the brain and the spinal cord fully exposed,’ and a two-headed baby. Many of the babies with major birth defects died shortly after birth.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz