YOU CAN'T SINK A RAINBOW
"Elaine Shaw, Director of Greenpeace New Zealand had just returned home from Piha when the telephone rang. It was a New Zealand Herald reporter who wanted to talk to her about the Rainbow Warrior....'at one o'clock in the morning!' she snapped...'Oh, I'm sorry, didn't you know? Your ship's been sunk'...Elaine slammed down the phone in shocked disbelief." --YOUR CAN'T SINK A RAINBOW July 10, 1995
It was an event that shook the world. July 10th 1985, the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior lay keeled to one side in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, after two bombs had ripped it apart around midnight. One crew member, Fernando Pereira, was dead. As time and an intensive investigation went on, the truth became inescapable - the French secret service were responsible and the French government had ordered the bombing.
The Rainbow Warrior had just arrived from the Marshall Islands when the bombing occurred. In the Marshalls, at the request of the islanders, the Rainbow Warrior had relocated the 320 residents of Rongelap atoll, whose home had been contaminated by US nuclear testing in the 1950s. The islanders had been plagued with cancer, leukaemia, birth defects and miscarriages since then; the Rainbow Warrior took them to a new life on Mejato atoll. Moruroa atoll, where French nuclear testing still took place, was the logical next destination on the Rainbow Warrior's voyage of peace.
The Rainbow Warrior bombing, ten years ago this July, was an historic act of violence - a display of state-sponsored terrorism on the soil of a strongly anti-nuclear country and against an organisation founded on the principle of non-violence. The bombing outraged the world. The French defence minister was forced to resign, the United Nations was called in to mediate a settlement between France and New Zealand, and Greenpeace continued the campaign which had provoked such a violent reaction - to stop French nuclear testing at Moruroa atoll in the South Pacific.
Ten years later, the Rainbow Warrior lies buried off the coast of New Zealand, slowly evolving into a living reef while a new Rainbow Warrior takes up her task. With an uncertain moratorium on nuclear testing in place, Greenpeace's commitment to campaigning and peaceful direct action to stop environmental destruction remains unchanged. The organization continues to work to end the nuclear threat, to protect the Pacific and other oceans from over-fishing and toxic pollution, and to halt ozone depletion and global warming.
'You Can't Sink a Rainbow' was the slogan that drove a small group of shocked and bereaved activists in Auckland in 1985 to work together to find other boats and sail again in protest to Moruroa, in spite of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Signals from France suggest nuclear testing may resume this year at Moruroa, in spite of the moratorium. Greenpeace - its ships, its supporters and the people that together make up the organisation - remain ready to fight for a nuclear-free future. Never has that been more important than in 1995, fifty years after the nuclear age began and the year in which the future of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty is decided.
Greenpeace is campaigning for real progress on nuclear disarmament. Alongside this it is campaigning for a new energy deal to replace the failed and dangerous promise of nuclear power with solar and other renewable technologies. This would satisfy the worlds energy needs without the risk of nuclear wars, contamination or nuclear proliferation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Death of the Rainbow Warrior by Michael King. Penguin Books 1986.
Eyes of Fire - The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior by David Robie. Ravette London, 1986.
Making Waves - The Story of Greenpeace New Zealand, by Michael Szabo. Reed 1991.
Rainbow Warrior by the Sunday Times Insight Team. Arrow Books Ltd, 1986.
Sink the Rainbow! An Enquiry into the 'Greenpeace Affair' by John Dyson. Victor Gollancz London, 1986.
The Greenpeace Story by John May and Michael Brown. Dorling Kindersley London, 1989.
The Rainbow Warrior Affair by Richard Shears and Isobelle Gidley. Unwin Paperbacks, 1986.
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