Nuclear free dream still way off
This week is the anniversary of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. It is not a particularly significant anniversary – it has been 32 years since French spies sabotaged the Greenpeace flagship at its berth at the Port of Auckland. However, several events in the past few days have brought the memory of the bombing more firmly to mind.
One was an interview, published by Stuff at the weekend, with the now 66-year-old French intelligence veteran Christine Cabon, better known as Frederique Bonlieu to the New Zealand Greenpeace activists she infiltrated to gather intelligence for the Rainbow Warrior attack.
She is a respected local councillor in Lasseubetat, southwest France. Breaking a silence of more than 30 years, Cabon stopped short of apologising for her part in the operation that killed photographer Fernando Pereira, but acknowledged that in New Zealand eyes ‘‘we are the terrorists’’. Two of her comrades were convicted of manslaughter, but served little time for their crime.
Another event was a landmark agreement at the United Nations, in which 122 countries approved a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons, moving them closer to the independent anti-nuclear stance adopted by New Zealand during the 1980s.
There was no single reason why the Labour government of David Lange decided to go nuclear free, effectively banning nuclear warships from our ports and causing a rift with the United States. It did not help, however, that other Western countries largely failed to condemn the Rainbow Warrior sinking as an attack on New Zealand sovereignty by France, a supposedly friendly state.
None of the countries currently possessing nuclear weapons were involved in the recent UN nuclear weapons ban negotiations. Foreign Affairs Minister Gerry Brownlee says people need to be ‘‘realistic’’ about the treaty’s prospects.
While most nations of the world are ready to back a treaty which would outlaw nuclear weapons, the nuclear-armed states are unlikely to give them up any time soon. Indeed, with rogue North Korea seeking to develop nuclear capability, the global outlook looks more complicated than under the Cold War conditions of three decades ago.
The Rainbow Warrior’s mission in 1985 was to oppose French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia, which continued until 1996. It is believed 193 nuclear tests were conducted at Mururoa and Fangataufa over 30 years, including 41 in the atmosphere.
The other significant event last week was the French Government’s decision to reconsider compensation for hundreds of veterans of the nuclear test programme in the Pacific.
The UN moves towards a treaty banning nuclear weapons show that progress is being made, but the nuclear-free future envisaged by the rainbow warriors of a previous generation is still far away. And the legacies of the Pacific testing programme are still with us.
- Fairfax NZ