Rainbow Warrior Affair
Greenpeace continued an unrelenting protest offensive in French Polynesia until 1996. The Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior was sunk by the French foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) while docked in Auckland harbour, New Zealand, on 10 July 1985.
It is often speculated that the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior was an act of revenge against Greenpeace and New Zealanders themselves for their successful campaigns to enforce a nuclear weapons test ban at Mururoa. When the French DGSE agents Commander Alain Mafart and Captain Dominique Prieur were captured in New Zealand and eventually sentenced to 10 years prison for their roles in sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior and manslaughter of Fernando Pereira, the French government threatened New Zealand with trade sanctions to the European Union if the pair were not released.
From a Pacific perspective, the military attack on the Rainbow Warrior only served to consolidate New Zealand's and the Pacific communities nuclear free zone ambitions. (Treaty of Rarotonga - South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty). The attack served to further isolate the French in that part of the world, which resulted in strong anti-French political campaigns for independence in Tahiti (see French Polynesian legislative election, 2004) and New Caledonia (see Politics of New Caledonia).
Read more about this topic: New Zealand's Nuclear-free Zone
Famous quotes containing the words rainbow, warrior and/or affair:
“The Rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the Rose,”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence.... I can sympathize with the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“Time, which shows so vacant, indivisible, and divine in its coming, is slit and peddled into trifles and tatters. A door is to be painted, a lock to be repaired. I want wood, or oil, or meal, or salt; the house smokes, or I have a headache; then the tax; and an affair to be transacted with a man without heart or brains; and the stinging recollection of an injurious or very awkward word,—these eat up the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)