I was 11 years old when the news flashed through in the morning that the beautiful Rainbow Warrior had been bombed.
What I remember most the incandescent rage I felt at the desecration of such a sacred symbol. The Rainbow Warrior was somehow an untouchable hero, the nuclear testing in the Pacific by France was such an abomination that all resistance against it was not only necessary, but moral.
Post the violence of the Springbok Tour, this issue seemed to weld us together as a nation, we may have bashed each other in the streets as rural knuckle dragging racist boof head rugby jocks smashed urbane anti-apathied activists, but on this issue, nuclear testing, we were united.
That it was the French, a nation we had spilled blood to protect in two previous world wars, who had committed this terrorism on our shores was an atrocity beyond any reckoning.
It wasn’t just us as a nation who suffered, it would still be 11 years before the French were shamed into stopping their disgusting radioactive pollution of our Pacific.
These French bastards never apologised for what they did, they let their agents off and gave them awards.
I look at the current Government’s attempts to spook NZers into giving them more surveillance powers and justify re-invading Iraq because of possible ‘terrorism’ and scoff when it was one of our supposed allies who has been the only foreign power to commit a terrorist action on NZ.
We should never forgive or forget what the French did to us 30 years ago.
Yes it is interesting that NZ’s only terrorist event was instigated by the French. Not Muslims Communists or even Tuhoe. The biggest terrorism danger to NZ comes in the form of a false flag probably using a disenfranchised, young idiot groomed by one western security service or another if NZ dared to step out of line with the evil empire.
NZ having an independent policy towards nuclear weapons is what caused the Rainbow Warrior sinking and associated murder.
NZ’s only terrorist event?
Does the bombing of the Wellington Trades Hall, and the death of Ernie Abbot not also count as a terrorist event?
I would also include the state sponsored violence of “Massey’s Cossacks” during the Great Strike of 1913, and the draconian emergency regulations imposed by the Holland Government during the 1951 Waterfront dispute as terrorist events.
I would even include the enactment of the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act, and the 1991 Employment Contracts Act as a terrorist events, but I’m aware that many others would not go that far.
NZ, as a nation, appears to be almost completely blind, or suffers from a form of memory loss, when it comes to our own history of domestic state sponsored terrorist events, or unsolved murder terrorist events.
Our history clearly shows that we are much better at terrorising ourselves than any foreigners have ever managed.
The combined actions of France, the USA, and all foreign faith-based extremists don’t even come close.
Over-egging a bit? NZers’ big chance to appear like lily-white aspirants to martyrdom? We dare not exhibit xenophobia or racism in most cases, but here it is OK to execrate, despise, and never forgive those ‘French bastards’? Don’t forget, NZ only captured 2 minor members of the team – the rest got away scot free. It is not as if we caught the whole lot. And don’t forget that it was excellent investigative journalism by the French newspaper ‘Le Monde’ that nailed the French Govt and forced them to admit guilt. Not us. How good is our investigative journalism?
Most French people were appalled by what a few Govt ministers and secret agents had done. And here you are breathing new fire into the embers of hatred? 30 years later you should certainly remember, but more enlightened people tend to see forgiveness as a virtue. I think you have over-egged it.
By the way, I opposed nuclear testing, and I currently support and donate monthly to Greenpeace. I am not anti-Green.
And by the way, Greenpeace were not wealthy at the time, and if you looked around at ships you would know that while Rainbow Warrior had been nicely decorated by Greenpeace, it was rather an old tub. Not ‘beautiful’.
I normally agree with your energetic writings, but I am not keen for our people to remember the Rainbow Warrior with the over-righteous attitude shown here. You were 11. I was 39. Maybe that is the difference.
I was 24 when I saw the news item of the Rainbow Warrior sailing past North Head to Auckand. Little did I realise back then how aborrent one nation(France) actions could demean themselves to because they didn’t like us(NZ)and our anti-nuclear stand. And little did I realise how two other major countries in the world i.e the US and the UK knew in advance the pending terrorist attack on the Rainbow Warrior and took the typical cowardy attitude of not letting us(NZ) know of this attack.Here we are 30 years on and the UK and the US both have blood on their hands due to their arrogance and pig-headedness.
Some years after the Rainbow Warrior bombing by the French DGSE South Africa attacked a neighbouring country. Margaret Thatcher in a news conference condemned the attack as being an ‘attack on a peaceful country’. When a NZ journalist queried her condemnatin of the attack by SA compared to the French bombing of the Rainbow Warrior Thatcher became very unpleasant.
I don’t think NZers will be all that trusting of the French since that act of terrorism.
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