The story of the Rainbow Warrior

It played a major role in the history of Greenpeace, before meeting a tragic end. This is the incredible story of the Rainbow Warrior.

Transcript

00:00She was definitely a warrior, but she was also inspiring for people.

00:26She inspired hope and she inspired courage.

00:56She was definitely a warrior, but she was also inspiring for people.

01:27International waters belong to everybody, to all of us.

01:31The question is what right do they have to be here?

01:34I mean, they're dumping pollution in the ocean, an ocean that belongs to everybody.

01:39And the question is not what right we have, what right do they have to be here?

02:27Our first campaign was to help or respond to a request from the Marshall Islands, from the Rongelap community,

02:36to relocate them to another island, one that hadn't been contaminated by US nuclear testing.

02:56I was not on board the night that the bomb went off on the warrior.

03:09I had gone to stay with my parents and we were woken up at two in the morning by the first mate

03:15to tell us that the warrior had sunk and that Fernando was missing.

03:19I had gone to stay with my parents and we were woken up at two in the morning by the first mate

03:26to tell us that the warrior had sunk and that Fernando was missing.

03:39I looked at my daughters and I said,

03:43We don't consider this to be a French scandal, we consider this to be a scandal of the nuclear

03:55age.

03:56This is the sort of thing you're going to have to accept if we accept the nuclear age.

04:00And we've always said that there was going to be more surveillance, there was going to

04:02be a much more repressive attitude about the world with the nuclear weapons and nuclear

04:07power program and I'm afraid this has proved it.

04:33The aftermath of the sabotage of the Rainbow Warrior and the murder of Fernando Pereira

04:39was huge.

04:40That created a lot of trouble for France and so it should.

04:45And for the nuclear, our anti-nuclear movement, it gave it impetus, it drove it even stronger

04:53because the cost and the brutality and the lack of security of having nuclear weapons

05:01at all was made very clear.

05:03I think it helped drive, eventually, and support the South Pacific becoming a nuclear-free