Tangi follows bombing

Tu Tangata, Issue 26, 1 October 1985, Page 19

Tangi follows bombing

Mana Motuhake leader Matiu Rata on Auckland's Marsden wharf for a religious service and tangi in honour of the martyred Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. Portuguese-born Pereira, 35, drowned when the Rainbow Warrior was sunk by two bombs on July 10.

Rata is himself an anti-nuclear campaigner who in 1971 sailed on board the 11 metre yacht Magic Eye to protest against French nuclear testing at Moruroa atoll while Greenpeace was in its infancy.

Rata was among many New Zealanders outraged at the controversial Tricot report on the role of the French secret service in the Warrior affair. “France has had its hands caught in the honey jar,” he says. "It is guilty of promoting the actions involved in sinking the Rainbow Warrior." He believes France should make a clearcut apology to New Zealand and turn the wanted suspects over to New Zealand authorities to face trial.

But Rata also wants the Lange government to order an inquiry, after legal proceedings have finished, into terrorism and security. He says the high treason laws should be expanded to cover acts of terrorism and subversion by foreign powers.

The 50 metre ketch-rigged trawler Rainbow Warrior was named after an ancient Cree Indian legend which tells of a prophecy made bv an elderly

grandmother called Eyes of Fire. She saw a time coming when the birds would fall out of the skies, the fish would be poisoned in their streams, the deer would drop in their tracks and the oceans would be “blackened” all thanks to the pakeha’s greed and technology. The Indian people would then regain their spirit and begin to teach the pakeha how to have reverence for mother earth. Using the symbol of the rainbow, all races of the world unite to

spread the Indian teaching. “Warriors of the rainbow” would end the destruction and desecration of mother earth. The 60 metre ocean-going tug Greenpeace has now gone to Moruroa to take the place of the Rainbow Warrior at the head of a protest fleet including four New Zealand boats. Maori antinuclear campaigners taking part are Rangi Godinvich, 46. on board the scow Alliance, and Tiama Calvin, 62, on the Greenpeace ketch Vega.