The Rainbow Warrior Affair

Television (Excerpts) – 1986

In July 1985 French government agents bombed Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior while it was moored at an Auckland wharf. The boat was set to protest French nuclear testing at Mururoa; photographer Fernando Pereira was killed. This TVNZ documentary, which screened in April 1986, explores the international incident and its fallout. This excerpt, featuring dramatic reconstructions, covers the arrival of the spies in New Zealand and their movements up to and after the bombing. Witnesses and key figures, such as Prime Minister David Lange, are interviewed.

Some people in France and some politicians, certainly in France, think that we are some sort of platform for an anti-French position within the South Pacific. That has, of course, a long history.
– Prime Minister David Lange on New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance being a possible motive