"The inflatable's propeller got caught in the reef. We carried the canoes and stumbled across the coral to the Lagoon. We had a fag, ate some marzipan and waited for dawn to check out the best bush to hide in. We found one dense on the outside and brittle on the inside which acted like a big bender. I disguised the shape of the Kayaks with sticks and leaves and tried to sleep.
Thousands of fist-sized hermit crabs started rummaging about in our food, tugging at our hair and jumping in our sleeping bags. It was impossible to get our heads down. At dawn a chopper came over and spotted the inflatable. It hovered over the bushes for three hours. We heard boats arriving and I guessed they were dropping more troops.
There was a lot of activity but we remained undetected. So we sat there feeling very smug, smoking fags and telling jokes. We couldn't tell the world we were there because the planned Microwave camera never happened and the chopper which was on the Greenpeace had been seized. We wanted the news to get out so that France knew we were at large on the island. We knew they had some idea because they'd found the inflatable - but there was no saying that it hadn't just been washed up. So my plan was to let some parachute distress flares off while Matt headed off to the Zone de Vivre (Life Zone) right on the other side of the island. We were in the Zone Interdit (Forbidden Zone) camped right between two former test sites. I would cause distractions to allow him to get through.
He would leave at first darkness and would attempt to take some photos stick thousands of 'NON!' Greenpeace stickers all over the island. Matt really wanted to fuck up the military because of the way he had been previously treated - he was very keen.
Matt left and I made arrangements to let off the parachute flare two and a half hours later. He knew that if he ran into the troops he could hide, wait 'til I let off the flare so they would be distracted, and be able to get through.
I thought I'd be very lucky to set off a flare and not be found coz it lights up half a square mile and the trail of smoke points directly back to ...YOU! It was a pretty dodgy thing to do. I let it off and everything went pink for miles. I ran in a panic to the wrong bush - I still hadn't slept - where there was no food, water or bedding. A chopper came over with a really piercing searchlight so I covered myself up with leaves. When I felt it was far enough away I ran to the right bush and covered myself and got into the sleeping bag. Another chopper arrived, this time with no lights, like a black silhouette - I could make out the shape by which stars had been blotted out. That hovered over the bushes and I was aware it might be was using infrared.
A patrol boat arrived and disappeared. I fell asleep for hours or minutes - I couldn't tell - and dragged my canoe out and loaded in the equipment. I canoed about half a mile to where the bomb site was. I let a flare off right near the rig and it lit up like a Christmas Tree. I sat there in the canoe in the water and I could see the coral - everything - bright pink. Suddenly, I saw a patrol boat heading towards me across the Lagoon. As soon as the flare went out it was complete darkness so I just headed straight at it. They'd think I'd be going either left or right - they wouldn't expect I'd go straight at them! We passed within 200 metres just missing each other. This thing nearly tipped me over - it was really thrashing along.
I got to the other side of the Lagoon - quite a few miles - and I let another flare off. I sat in amongst the rocks and waited for that to go out. Then I started to canoe straight towards the Life Zone.
By this stage I was getting a bit kamikaze. I was so cold and tired. I didn't know how much exposure to radiation I'd had. So I decided to canoe into the daylight and let a smoke flare off coz that was the last thing I had - a canister of orange smoke in the hope that the peace flotilla would spot me if they hadn't already. That was pretty risky and I knew I was gonna get caught. But I knew that Matthew was still doing his thing and I'd made loads of distractions for him. So I sat sort of stunned for a really long time in a shallow bit just looking at the coral and the fish and waiting for it to get sunny. It got light and a chopper came over and missed me in broad daylight. I don't think they were expecting to see a guy in a canoe. I was sitting amongst all these black rocks.
I started canoeing to the Life Zone, thinking I'd leave the smoke flare to the last moment. That chopper came back, flew over me and practically skidded to a halt. It hovered right above my head. I was a bit nervous coz that part of the Lagoon had actually sunk and the sea was crashing on the reef. It was getting quite tricky to balance the canoe.
I spotted some sharks. At one point I could see three sharks thrashing around aggressively at this unknown intruder and one of them banged into me. I was quite grateful for the chopper coz it started scaring them all off. It sort of sat on my head tearing up the water all around me. I was trying to stay upright.
I signalled to the chopper pilot that I was going further away. He could see that I was really having a bad time but he could also see that I wasn't trying to escape. I was going to canoe half a mile away and hoped that he could pick me up from there.
For some reason they winched down a really stupid-looking stretched-out guy in a red wet suit with a mask and snorkel. He was on a line coming towards me. So it was then I decided to chuck the flare and he disappeared in a puff of orange smoke! The pilot came out to one side and I motioned him to winch the guy up. It was really funny, I felt I was in control of the whole situation! He was probably winching him up anyway, but ...!
Then I saw three inflatables coming towards me going really fast, it looked like they were racing each other to be the first to make the arrest. I signalled to them to slow down.
I canoed alongside one of the boats, reached over and took one by the hand which quite shocked him and got him to pull me out of the canoe. This was all a bit confusing for them coz they thought they'd have to beat me up and hold me down.
He was shouting "Get Down! Get Down! Get Down!". I was trying to help them but they just kept telling me I had two choices - to "SHUT UP OR ...", and they wouldn't tell me what the other choice was, so I shut up.
We thrashed along through the Lagoon to the waiting Naval ship where they nicked me. The first thing they were concerned with was whether there was anyone else on the island. I was really shivering and freezing cold. I was greeted, if that's the word, by a Legionnaire Andrew Williams. I was quite relieved that there were a few on board who spoke English.
I was told that if I didn't tell him exactly what he wanted to know they would tie me up and that I'd serve a five year prison sentence. I told them there was one person on the island and that was all they wanted to know at that point. It was then I also realised that Matt must've been caught as well.
Then they searched all the equipment. I was surprised, they were really fascinated by the teeny VHF radio and the Global Positioning Unit. I think everything they had dated from the 1940s. So they crowded around and played with it for ages.
The police arrived and took me back to the station where they started to question me more thoroughly. I saw Mattes bag. That was a bad sign. I decided that, being military police, I could give them a harder time answering questions than not answering them. I could appear to be very, very helpful when in fact I wasn't being helpful at all. They seemed very pleased - I wasn't telling the truth, obviously.
Then, my chair nearly got whacked out from under me! There was Matt, on crutches, laughing his head off. There was a bandage on his elbow and his knee. They wouldn't let us talk to each other, at that time, after 48hrs.
It transpired that about midnight he'd encountered a patrol of Paratroopers who'd just got back from Bosnia. One of them grabbed him and he managed to get away. He'd jumped into the Lagoon and swum about a kilometre further on towards the Life Zone. He'd got onto the beach and managed to penetrate that Zone. He took photos and stuck stickers everywhere - including one on the door of the police station! Then he stuck a roll of film up his bum and headed off to find me. He got found in the bushes by the same patrol who were all soaking wet coz they'd been looking for him in the Lagoon. They were really, really angry.
They got him down on the ground and tied his ankles to his wrists. A nylon cord was put around his neck and they'd arched his neck back and tied that to his ankles and pulled him around all over the ground. They were sticking him with bayonets with the covers on them pretending to kill him. They fractured his kneecap hitting him with a revolver and put quite a big gash in his elbow. They stuck a gun barrel to his head and repeated "Je t'ai explode le tete, Je t'ai explode le tete." Basically it was like a mock execution - telling him "We are going to kill you, we are going to kill you. We have the right to blow your head to bits".
He urinated in his pants. He thought that was it, you know, his time had come. He spoke to them in French and told them that there was another person on the island. He also told them that his father was a famous magazine editor and they calmed down a bit. They were still hitting him though. Then the Chief of Command turned up. The police picked Matt up by the cords which held his wrists and ankles and threw him in the back of the van.
They took him to the station, via the infirmary where they patched him up, X-rayed him and gave him crutches. So that was the condition I met Matt at the police station.
They were having trouble interviewing us. We pretended we didn't speak French so they brought in John Wall, head of the French Commandos, who is actually Australian! His claim to fame was organising the raids on the Rainbow Warrior and Greenpeace. He was quite proud of that. He did all the 'interpreting' for us. He struck me as a reasonable bloke.
Then he said "Okay, I've got better things to do now. It's three hours 'til the bomb goes off". I thought he was joking. I was pretty sure they wouldn't let it go off until everyone on the island had given their consent. That's what I'd heard. Anyway the interview broke off, they took me away and stuck me in a cell.
The cell was 8 by 8 feet made of concrete with a small window which you could just see out of if I stood on tip-toe. No toilet. Just two bottles of mineral water. So I paced up and down the cell. All this time I could hear a sort of countdown every ten minutes from a voice on the PA which ran all across the Life Zone. They'd say: "All vehicles must stop moving." And then another command ten minutes later. One of these commands was to start ascending these platforms which are supposed to be for their safety. They are about five metres off the ground on stilts like a boxing ring. They evacuate everyone on the island to these platforms. The reason for that is that if there is a tidal wave or the island starts to sink they are better being high up, they won't get hit by falling trees and they'll be easier to rescue.
I sat there in the cell looking at the door thinking they'll come and get me in a minute. But they didn't. I stood by the window. I was really dehydrated. I'd just finished pissing in this bottle and I could hear this noise, this really distant noise. And then the whole cell leapt five inches and then went down and then came back up. At the same time I could hear all the timbers and concrete settling back down. At the same time I could hear an enormous explosion about ten miles away. It was muffled but it was really big. I was stunned by that and I sat there waiting for what was going to be next. I began to think how I was locked in a cell and that if anything had gone wrong I don't think anybody would have tried to get me out. It would have been 'every man for himself' sort of thing and I'd have been locked in this concrete cell. I was quite glad when I looked out of the window there was no flash and it seemed it had gone ok.
Time passed pretty uneventfully. They came in and interviewed me to clarify some details. Then they said "Ok, we are going to fly you out now." The police could only hold us for 48hrs unless they counted us as terrorists which would be heavy. A couple of flights went by to Tahiti and there wasn't any room for us. Then we learnt that the airport was burning down in the capital, Papeete.
They gave me the option of being flown by chopper to the nearest Atoll, Vanavana, where I'd be a free man. It turned out that there's 14 people living on that island eating fish and bananas and that there may be a boat passing in a month! I was quite interested in that one - but I thought I'd better stay with Matthew.
So they couldn't get us off the island but they couldn't kept us in a police cell so they decided to give us to the Legionnaires. We were put into a Legionnaires cell and told "they probably won't beat you up". Chief of the Commandos, John Wall, said he'd look after us.
We blagged him that we'd hidden all this stuff, hi-tech expensive equipment, on the island and told him he could have it if he could bring us some books to read, fags etc. So there he was in the Red Zone, the contaminated area, digging around with his minions in the radioactive dirt looking for the nonexistent kit. We had really good fun, it started to get very relaxed.
At one point John asked us how we'd managed to orientate ourselves to know where all this stuff was and Matt told him: "I could see Fangataufa [the nearest Atoll] from the top of the bomb rig so I knew it was East." John was amazed:"What! You were on the rig! How did you get up there?". Matt told him "Oh, you know, commando-stylee". We told them a whole load of shit like that and they just seemed to believe everything!
We managed to carry on sticking stickers everywhere which was not really the point of the exercise but it was very entertaining! So they kept us for a couple of days - we had now been there a week - before they got us a flight. Up to this point no-one knew Matthew had served there as a Legionnaire. We got put into a van to drive us to the plane and this guy came up and said "I know you! You're Matt, Matt Winters!". His jaw just dropped but the van moved off and we flew to Tahiti.
We opened the door of the plane at Papeete airport and it just smelt like there had been a big bonfire. We were driven to the gates of the airport where there was a big truckload of guys dressed in black, all tooled up, wild-eyed and nervous. What we found out then was that they thought we were ex-SAS! So we had an escort to come out and we realised there were a lot of people waiting for us. So Matthew nearly leapt out of the police car and shouted to them "We are going to see the judge!". It was really good coz they followed us to where the judge was but Matt did that at the expense of having his ribs severely beaten with a torch.
The judge was reasonable and had a lot of respect for us. He allowed us to speak to our lawyer and they left the room. Matt even borrowed the judge's mobile to call his girlfriend! Then they took us away and held us in a garage supervised by the SWAT team. They were discussing killing us and throwing us in the sea. I don't know how serious they were but they were not happy with us with the riot and everything. It was all a bit much for them.
They took us handcuffed to the part of the airport which was still standing to deport us via LA and Paris back to London City Airport. We flew out and that was that.
Back in London Matt went and got the film developed which turned out all over-exposed. So either the sun shines out of his arse or he was exposed to radiation - I dunno which. Matt was leaving to get back to his girlfriend and he jumped in a cab. It was just driving off when he leant out of a window and shouted back to me: "So what are we gonna do about the tests in China, then?!!"
| Youth CND: | 0171 607 3616 |
|---|---|
| Greenpeace: | 0171 354 5100 |
| British Nuclear Test Ban Coalition: | 0171 354 5200 |
Over 120 tests have been conducted on Mururoa alone since 1966.
Tama began working at Mururoa in the 1960s as an office worker
"Bombs were still being exploded in the atmosphere then. We were issued with gloves to wear but no other protective clothing was provided - although sometimes we wore masks. We all had to carry a batch of film and a special pencil to measure the dose of radiation we were exposed to. Lagoon fish were allowed but considered unsafe. I got sick several times. I was itchy all over and my skin peeled just like a snake."
Ruta has worked in Mururoa for the last ten years
"When people die on Mururoa they are put in metal coffins and the seams are welded so that nobody can open them anymore"
Jaques Ihorai is President of the Evangelical Church of Polynesia
"The traditional spirit of Polynesians is that the land is like our mother. People came from the land. We must respect our mother, not explode bombs in her belly. Our good way of life comes from the land. Destruction of the land will lead to destruction of life, and the way of life of Polynesian people."
