Aukland, New Zealand

Blown up, 1985

It was a Greenpeace ship… now it is a lost wreck near New Zealand, Auckland. We visited it by diving. Anon.

The Rainbow Warrior was a ship, acquired by the environmental activist group, Greenpeace, in 1977 that was used in a variety of anti-whaling, anti-seal hunting and anti-nuclear testing and waste dumping campaigns. The ship was sunk using limpet mines placed by agents from  the French intelligence agency, the Directorate-General for External Security while in the Port of Auckland. At the time, the ship was on its way to a protest against a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa in a covert operation codenamed Opération Satanique (Satanic Operation). A photographer, Fernando Pereira, perished on the sinking ship. Two of the French agents were captured by the New Zealand Police and were eventually sentenced to 10 years imprisonment (was commuted to two years confinement on the French island of Hao, due to pressure from the French Government). 

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