I'm sure you can imagine what it is like to be French on such circumstances, when you sort of represent a country that is responsible for the bombing of a boat full of nice people who just wanted to prevent France (amongst others) from developing and testing new nuclear weapons. You would have the same mixed feelings as myself, excited about the whole ceremony that is coming, and anxious about the fact that people from my country, my culture, my government resorted to killing an innocent person.

I remember the scandal that broke out in France thanks to the investigations of a bunch of daring journalists who managed to uncover the whole story, exposing the agents who had perpetrated the crime, and the public authorities, including at least the Minister of Defence, who had ordered it. I was still a youngster at that time, and was learning my first political lesson: political elites, even elected, or pretending to be progressive, can go as far as bombing a boat, and killing one of its crew to protect the interests of the few against those of the majority. That day, I learnt that state terrorism could also come from your own government, even in a democratic society. That was a highly disturbing lesson to learn, the type of lesson that shapes your political representations for the rest of your life, and forces you to choose sides.

Well, I was saying you get forced to choose sides: as a matter of fact, after such a lesson, you're left with very few options. You can decide to go on as if nothing had happened, as if it was not your business. But then it's going to be hard to live with this sense of guilt, cowardice and moral crisis you're likely to experience. Or you choose to join those who had run the risk to lose life to protect the planet, and who had encountered such a brutal reaction.

I chose to join, and here I am, 20 years after the bombing, taking part in a celebration as a French campaigner for nuclear disarmament, sharing its mixed feelings of shame and pride with you. Indeed, what brought the old Rainbow Warrior to the seas of French Polynesia remains very alive today. The battle for stopping atmospheric and underground testing was won. But the nuclear arm race is getting a new momentum since the end of the Cold War. Yet it is not the rivalry between two giants that is feeding it nowadays, but the cold appetite for regional power and financial gain.

The situation is frightening: the three Western nuclear powers, the US, the UK and France, keep on improving their nuclear weapons, and are conducting research to find out how to create nuclear weapons to be used as ordinary weapons, on the battle field, not as mere deterrent but as offensive arms: mini nukes they call it. In doing so, of course, these three countries are sending a scary message to non nuclear nations, something that says "you could very well be on our list of targets sooner or later". A message quickly translated into "we'd better develop our own nuclear capacity if we don't want to be bombed". Hence the arms race for the bomb. And guess what, the first country to point the finger at "rogue states" willing to get the bomb is the very same country ready to sell them the expertise, the technologies and the Uranium of Plutonium to manufacture the bomb.

Look at France: it is currently developing a nuclear cooperation with states like Iran or Libya, among others, pretending to sell them only "pacific" nuclear technologies. But all the technologies are both military and pacific, and they know it for sure! This is the kind of hypocrisy that enables the nuclear proliferation to carry on unnoticed, while few countries are making profits in spreading these deadly toys. Who's going to stop them? We need more Rainbow Warriors, and more people of Fernando Pereira's type, ready to expose the dangers of the world to convince public opinions to oppose them!

Bye for now, I may have talked too long, and the night is coming onto the lower mountains of the northern coast of New Zealand. Tonight is not for sad thoughts!

Cheers,

Xavier - Greenpeace Anti-Nuclear Campaigner, from France.