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Release Date: Monday, July 18, 2005 Type: Article Subject: Academic Department: School of Communication Studies Author calls for more pressure on France over nuclear testing victims

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New Zealand should apply more diplomatic pressure on France for compensation for Tahitian victims of nuclear test radiation and full disclosure of health dossiers, says the author of a new book about the Rainbow Warrior bombing.

David Robie says the South Pacific victims of three decades of nuclear testing by France and 16 years by the United States were virtually ignored in this month’s 20th anniversary of the sabotage of the Greenpeace ship.

Speaking at the relaunching of an expanded and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior at an art gallery on Waiheke Island at the weekend (EDS: July 16), Dr Robie said there was a lot of hypocrisy about terrorism.

While condemning last week’s bombings in London, he noted that two decades ago the two countries leading today’s war on terrorism – Britain and the United States – were “deafeningly silent” about state terrorism by France against an environmental ship in a New Zealand port.

French secret agents bombed the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour on July 10, 1985, with the death of Portuguese-born photographer Fernando Pereira.

Dr Robie, an associate professor in communication studies at Auckland University of Technology, said the events in Britain had been tragic but he questioned the “historical revisionism” that had been going on in NZ and other media about the Rainbow Warrior affair.

“The only terrorist outrage committed against New Zealand has been state terrorism by a major friendly power and aimed at a friendly nation in peacetime and against a non-violent environmental organisation and a peaceful photographer bearing witness,” he said.

“Apart from eight months in New Zealand prisons, and a brief exile at Hao military base in French Polynesia – some would describe that as a holiday in paradise – for two of the bombers, the other 11 secret agents operating in New Zealand got off free.”

Arrest warrants for other agents involved in the bombing had been withdrawn.

He also questioned the lack of justice for Pacific Islanders who had suffered from the 86 nuclear tests conducted by the US in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1962, and the 193 French tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls between 1966 and 1996.

Also speaking at the book launching, Dutch-born Martini Gotje, former first mate of the Rainbow Warrior, said: “We may have stopped the testing but the nuclear war rages on.”

He called for more support for Moruroa e Tatou (Moruroa and Us), the Tahitian nuclear veterans association. Greenpeace has launched an appeal in New Zealand backing the veterans.

Earlier yesterday, Dr Robie criticised the hypocrisy over the Rainbow Warrior state terrorism affair in an interview with Amy Goodman on the independent US radio and television show Democracy Now.

For more information please contact : David Robie