The bombing of Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior on 10 July 1985 was an event that changed New Zealand forever. It left crew member Fernando Pereira dead and sparked outrage.
To commemorate 30 years since the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior the University of Auckland is hosting a public lecture to discuss how the bombing impacted the environmental movement.
Dr Ryan Tucker Jones, of the University’s Faculty of Arts, along with Steve Abel of Greenpeace International, will be joined by Sue Taei of Conservation International and Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato.
“When French terrorists bombed Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior 30 years ago, they tried to smash the environmental movement’s radical challenge to politics in the Pacific,” Dr Jones says. “With this forum we want to keep going the conversation that Greenpeace started. Rather than ending the environmental movement, the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior is still raising people’s consciousness about environmental issues here in New Zealand and around the Pacific. It’s still a wonderful legacy from a very tragic event.”
The lecture is at 5pm on July 10 at the Fale Pasifika on the university’s City Campus.