Photo: RNZ/ABC
A podcast co-produced by RNZ and the ABC has been named Best International Podcast at the Asia Podcast Awards.
The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior won the award at a ceremony in Jakarta, Indonesia on Wednesday night, where judges praised the high standard of entries and said "competition has never been as intense as this year".
Access the podcast series here.
While the story of the bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior in Auckland in 1985 has been told many times, fewer people are aware of why the ship was berthed in Auckland that July.
It had just been used to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. The atoll and its people were suffering from severe radiation contamination due to nuclear testing by the US in the 1950s and the Rainbow Warrior moved more than 300 people and all their belongings away from their homeland.
RNZ's executive editor, audio, Tim Watkin, says this latest international award for RNZ podcasts is "a reflection of the world class work done at RNZ. This is a story of a Pacific people who were collateral damage in the geo-politics of the cold war, a story we shouldn't forget, and a story that New Zealand is inexorably tied to given our stance against nuclear testing in the Pacific and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland. And it's the kind of story podcasts tell so well because they can go so deep".
The six-part podcast is hosted by James Nokise and produced by RNZ's Justin Gregory, who both travelled to the Marshall Islands to speak to survivors and the descendants of the Rongelap refugees.
The podcast was engineered by Rangi Powick. It has been a finalist at the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union and New York Festival of Radio awards and was named Best Documentary at this year's NZ Radio and Podcast Awards.
The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior beat finalists from Singapore, Australia, and a podcast made by multi-national company McKinsey & Co. It was the first co-production between RNZ and ABC's Radio Australia, its international broadcast arm.
Podcast producers from more than 40 countries, including Japan, China, India and Turkey, entered this year's awards.
