Meeting of the Rainbow Warriors

– Music video featuring Michael Franti and Spearhead’s "Bomb the World" with images of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Real Player

– Rainbow Warrior Anniversary Video News Piece This is a four minute news feature on the nuclear threat and the significance of the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French agents in 1985. It features interviews with former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange, Guardian journalist Paul Brown, and Greenpeace Executive Director Gerd Leipold. Real Player

To mark the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior (II) is in Matauri Bay, New Zealand to join in a moving Maori ceremony.

Attending the ceremony are Rongelap Senator Abbaca Anjan-Maddison , Anne Summers Chair of Greenpeace International, Greenpeace staff and former Rainbow Warrior crew members.

A team of divers will take a marble wreath carved with a peace dove down to the wreck of the original Rainbow Warrior, led by Peter Willcox, the captain on the night of the bombing,

On July 10 1985, the original Rainbow Warrior was in Auckland preparing to lead a peace flotilla to protest against French nuclear testing at Muroroa. At 11.50pm the ship was rocked by two bomb blasts which sank it, killing Portugese photographer Fernando Pereira.

Crew members recall that Fernando went below deck to get his cameras.
As Captain Peter Willcox explains, "While Fernando was in his cabin, which was below the water line, a second bomb went off."

When police divers recovered Fernando’s body, he had drowned in his cabin, the straps of his camera bag were around one leg.

Despite official denials from Paris, within days the New Zealand police arrested two French secret service agents, Allain Marfart and Dominique Prieur in connection with the bombing.

It was not until September that the French government admitted ordering the attack. Only Mafart and Prieur served time, both less than 3 years of a 10 year sentence. The divers who set the bombs were never caught.

The bombing of the famous ship galvanised support for Greenpeace from all over the world. The act of state-sponsored terrorism still resonates today, with the city of Toronto in Canada this year proclaiming July 10 "Rainbow Warrior Day".

"The Rainbow Warrior is a symbol of hope and peace, especially in a world still coming to grips with violence, terrorism and war," said Danny Kennedy, Greenpeace Australia Pacific Campaigns Manager.

"Bombs are never acceptable - not on the Rainbow Warrior, in the streets of London and Baghdad, and not in the nuclear arsenals of the US, France, the UK and the other nuclear weapon states."

Greenpeace activists around the world will hold peaceful commemoration services: including a lantern ceremony in Sydney; a church service in Suva attended by the Fijian Vice President, and in Paris more than 500 activists will create a giant rainbow symbol of hope and peace.

Following the commemoration activities, the Rainbow Warrior will head to Australia on a Clean Energy Revolution tour from July 22 to August 3 - visiting Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne and Adelaide.

VISIT: the Rainbow Warrior in Australia.

READ: more about the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand.

READ: more about the Rainbow Warrior.