Interview with Waihopai protester Peter Murnane

"I've got some swords I'd like to turn into ploughshares," says the blog post. "I'd like to use their heads as anvils."

The actions of the men who allegedly broke into the Waihopai spy base with a pair of insulated bolt cutters and two $10 sickles bought from Bunnings Warehouse have not won universal approval.

But Dominican friar Peter Murnane is - no pun intended - unrepentant.

"Deciding to do it was crossing a line and it changes your thinking for several months. And now I'm in a different place from most people in this city. I know I'm in a right place, because I've thought it out and I've prayed it out, but most people will misunderstand or criticise or reject me."

Murnane, Samuel Land and Adrian Leason have been charged with intentionally damaging a satellite dish and entering a building with the intention to commit a crime. They have made statements about the action under the banner Anzac Ploughshares, a name they say can be used by any small group of people "committed to peace and disarmament and who non-violently, safely, openly and accountably disable a war machine or system so that it can no longer harm people".

They were arrested on April 30, and spent four nights in Blenheim police station cells, before receiving bail last Monday. Peter Reginald Leo Murnane, 76, caught the ferry and hitchhiked home to Auckland, back to the apartment he shares with three others from the religious order that eschews personal bank accounts, and requires earnings to be shared within its community.

"We are the original Christian communists," says Murnane, a man who is also quite comfortable being called a radical.

"Radical means going to the root of the matter. The root of the gospel is, don't harm your brother and sister." And, according to Murnane, "the Waihopai base is an evil".

In 1999, Murnane spoke out against Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation), saying it robbed the poor. He has written letters to the press about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, two years ago, made a 40-day bicycle pilgrimage from Canberra to Uluru, reflecting on the plight of Aborigines.

He was part of the Auckland Dominican community which gave accommodation to Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui. In 2003, he and another man protested the Iraq war by pouring their own blood in the form of a cross on the floor of the US Consulate.

Back then, Bishop Patrick Dunn apologised for Murnane's actions. This time? "Significantly, no church comment has been made to me... I think I'm a little bit like the elephant in the room."

The latest action, he says, is "consistent" with his beliefs.

"Although I've never been in jail before. You might say I'm growing."

Born in Cobden, Western Victoria, and raised with a strong Catholic faith, Murnane credits his father with instilling a sense of duty to the embattled and poor.

"My father had a very egalitarian sense. He would talk to the poorest and the wealthiest with equal ease. He was suspicious of excessive church pomp and formality and warned us against it."

Murnane junior joined the Dominican friars in 1959, and became an ordained priest six years later.

There was, he says, no single event that put him on the path to radicalism although he was deeply affected by a meeting with two South American victims of what he calls CIA-permitted torture. "Priests ought to speak for the victims," he says.

It was early morning when Murnane, Land and Leason assembled outside Waihopai. It had been raining, but, says Murnane, there was no "pea-soup fog" as has been claimed by officials.

The plan was to drive a Hiab truck to the base and go over the top of the razor-wired, electrified fence. When the vehicle got bogged they approached on foot. They prayed as they cut the first wire. There was a twang. It wasn't until the sixth wire they saw sparks. And then they were through.

Bolt cutters made short work of two more fences vertical bars, recalls Murnane, 3cm thick, like those that surround swimming pools.

It was the prophet Isaiah who spoke of a golden age when peace would reign on earth, and "they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning hooks".

They took sickles to the white dome covering of one of two satellite interception dishes. There was a loud noise, a rush of wind. "It took fully 15 minutes to look like a drooping ice cream," says Murnane.

By the time the guards arrived, the men had set up a shrine. Red silk covered an upturned wine box. On it they placed an icon of Jesus, a picture of the assassinated El Salvadorean arch bishop Oscar Romero, written statements of protest and a burning candle.

"We were delighted," says Murnane. "And surprised it had been so successful."

This is a man who constantly questions but doesn't doubt his faith: "How could there be a God who made a hundred billion galaxies? What is God like? How could that God be present in all of us? How could we bomb Iraq and make excuses to do so? How can we tear down Palestinians homes in Gaza? How could we bomb Dresden in World War II? I'm against all war."

The men wore Anzac poppies as they made their way to Waihopai, which, says Murnane, "feeds the war machine at all levels".

"Anzac Day is about fighting tyranny to make a just world. It was misguided... it was wrong to shoot a Turk to do so, but it was all about justness. We went into that base to dismantle an unjust weapon which leads to torture and invasions."

In prison, his cross was removed and his Bible confiscated and replaced with a police station copy. It was cold, he says, in paper overalls and underwear. The cell smelled of urine and vomit, but he says the officers who locked the doors were "impeccably generous and friendly".

Murnane believes he could plead not guilty when his case goes to court. "Although technically burglary, technically breaking in, it's for a good cause."

Making the base "a little bit less acceptable" was, he says, a statement for God. "I don't have a hotline for God. I believe God is in me, and I pray daily. But I think one can tell when one's doing godly or ungodly things... what we did is not immoral."

- © Fairfax NZ News