Fernando Pereira
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- See Fernando "Cobo" Pereira for the officer of São Tomé and Príncipe, and Fernando Pereira for the University of Pennsylvania computer science researcher.
Fernando Pereira (May 10, 1950–July 10, 1985) was a freelance Dutch photographer, of Portuguese origin, who drowned when French intelligence (DGSE) used two underwater mines to sink the ship Rainbow Warrior, owned by the environmental organisation Greenpeace on July 10, 1985 (see sinking of the Rainbow Warrior).
The bombing of the boat was designed to avoid any casualty, as a small bomb first exploded to "warn" the people on the boat. As the Greenpeace team evacuated the boat, Pereira stayed inside the boat to get his camera and other pieces of equipment. The second, more powerful explosion, designed to sink the boat, knocked him unconscious, which led to his drowning death.
The Rainbow Warrior had been used to lead a flotilla of yachts protesting against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in the Tuamotu Archipelago of French Polynesia and was being prepared for a campaign of demonstrations within French military operational areas.
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[edit] The Night of the Bombing
The night was chilly as the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior lay moored at Auckland's Marsden Wharf on Wednesday, 10 July 1985. It had arrived in New Zealand from Vanuatu three days earlier - a week after President Haruo Remeliik had been assassinated in Belau. Greenpeace campaigners were preparing the former North Sea fishing trawler for the environmental group's biggest-ever protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll, one which they hoped would embarrass France over nuclear testing even more than the many brave forays of the yacht Vega. On board, supporters celebrated the 29th birthday of Steve Sawyer, the American co-ordinator of the Pacific Peace Voyage.
Unknown to the Greenpeace activists, two frogmen, French secret agents Jacques Camurier and Alain Tonel, had set off in an inflatable dinghy across the 2km stretch of the misty harbour from Mechanics Bay. It was ironic that the saboteurs were using a French-made Zodiac -- the craft used by marine commandos to chase the Vega in 1973 (when they bludgeoned David McTaggart, Greenpeace founder in the Pacific), and later adopted by the Greenpeace 'commandos of conservation' in dramatic campaigns against nuclear waste dumpers and whalers.
Camurier and Tonel crouched low into the icy breeze as they motored slowly across the harbour. It was bitterly cold, even in their waterproof jackets and wetsuits. Stowed on board the grey-and-black craft were two explosive packs wrapped in plastic, a clamp, rope, and the rest of their scuba gear -- including two rebreather oxygen tanks, which did not release telltale bubbles underwater. It was about 8.30 pm when they were close enough to switch off the little four horsepower Yamaha motor and paddle towards the Rainbow Warrior's berth. They moored the Zodiac to a sheltered wharf pile. So far, so good. It was just as they had Corsica, France. Donning their flippers, oxygen tanks and masks, Camurier and Tonel slipped into the inky water. Then they reached over the side of the inflatable to grab the bombs, the heavier of which weighed 15 kilos. They both swam underwater with the bombs, clamp and rope to the stern of the Rainbow Warrior. Tonel attached the smaller, 10 kilo bomb to the propeller shaft; Camurier fixed the clamp on to the keel and ran out of rope to pinpoint a spot to attach the larger bomb next to the engineroom.
The hull explosive would sink the ship, the propeller mine would cripple it. Both bombs were timed to explode in just over three hours, at 11.50 pm. The explosives laid, the frogmen headed back to their hidden Zodiac. The hardest part of their mission was over. The first blast ripped a hole the size of a garage door in the engineroom. The force of the explosion was so powerful that a freighter on the other side of Marsden Wharf was thrown five metres sideways. As the Rainbow Warrior rapidly sank until the keel touched the harbour floor, the shocked crew scrambled on to the wharf. But Fernando Pereira dashed down a narrow stairway to one of the stern cabins to rescue his expensive cameras. The second explosion probably stunned him and he drowned with his camera straps tangled around his legs.
Fernando's daughter, Marelle, then aged eight, in June 1995 appealed in the French newspaper Liberation to anybody who was involved in the bombing operation to tell her fully what had happened in the bombing. 'Now I am 18, I am an adult and I think by now I have the right to know exactly what events transpired surrounding the explosion which cost my father his life,' she wrote. She also travelled to New Zealand to interview former Prime Minister David Lange and Greenpeace campaigners who sailed on the Rainbow Warrior.
[edit] A fellow journalist onboard speaks
I had been on board the Rainbow Warrior for 11 weeks, and my cabin was opposite Pereira's. But I had left the ship three days earlier, on arriving in Auckland, to return to my Grey Lynn home. A planned visit to the ship that night with my two sons and their Scout troop had been cancelled at the last moment. When the Rainbow Warrior was refloated and towed to the Devonport Naval Base dry dock, I discovered my old cabin had a huge bulge and hole where my bunk had been. My passport had been earlier recovered by navy divers from the bridge.””
Fernando and I were among seven journalists accompanying the Greenpeace campaigners -- he was also a crew member; the rest of us were independent reporters, filing for Australian, British, French, Japanese, New Zealand and Pacific news media. Our task was to travel to the Marshall Islands to report on the evacuation of the stricken islanders from Rongelap Atoll. The Rongelap people had been contaminated by radioactive fallout, three decades earlier, in the most tragic disaster of American atmospheric tests of the 1950s-- the 15-megaton Bravo H-bomb on Bikini Atoll, on 1 March
Fernando had fled Portugal during the colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and East Timor while he was serving as a military pilot. He settled in Holland, the only country that would grant him citizenship. An amusing, engaging and likeable environmental photojournalist, he joined the Amsterdam daily newspaper De Waarheid.
[edit] Daughter's Memories
"As an 8-year-old girl, I remember that my dad was a member of Greenpeace and he was fighting for a good cause; that they were fighting and protesting for the seals to stay alive. I remember very well that Greenpeace had actions and protesting on Antarctica and painting the fur on the seals so I knew in a large way what my dad was doing and making pictures."
[edit] Recent Updates
On the twentieth anniversary of the sinking, it was revealed that the French president François Mitterrand had personally authorised the bombing. Admiral Pierre Lacoste made a statement saying Pereira's death weighed heavily on his conscience. Also on that anniversary, Television New Zealand (TVNZ) sought to access a video record made at the preliminary hearing where the two agents pleaded guilty. The footage has remained sealed on the court record since shortly after the conclusion of the criminal proceedings. The two agents oppose release of the footage—despite having both written books themselves on the incident—and have taken the case to the New Zealand Court of Appeal and, subsequently, the Supreme Court of New Zealand.
[edit] External links
- "Death of a Rainbow Warrior," July 10, 2005 (20th anniversary), Greenpeace website.
- [1] Daughter article on 20th anniversary. 2005.
