Guterres warns that “humanity is playing with a gun” in the face of the possibility of a new nuclear race

Aug. 6 () –

The Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, warned this Friday in Hiroshima that “humanity is playing with a loaded pistol” in the face of a new arms race.

“It is totally unacceptable that the states in possession of nuclear weapons admit the possibility of a nuclear war. Humanity is playing with a loaded weapon,” Guterres warned on the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan.

Thus, since the Hiroshima memorial, the Secretary General has paid tribute to the victims of the atomic bombs. “Today in Hiroshima, I paid tribute to the tens of thousands of people who died from the atomic bombs 77 years ago. We cannot forget the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” he said on his Twitter account.

In addition, in the publication he added that we must “act in his memory and erase nuclear weapons from the face of the earth once and for all.”

The head of the UN has considered that “nuclear weapons make no sense”: “We must ask ourselves what we have learned from the mushroom cloud that rose over this city in 1945,” he stressed, according to a statement from United Nations.

Guterres has lamented the bombing of Japanese territory in World War II. He has also reflected on the geopolitical tensions during the Cold War over the “terrifying threats that put humanity within minutes of annihilation.”

In turn, he has warned that world leaders are spending huge amounts of money to increase nuclear weapons arsenals with the consequent acceleration of a new arms race.

“Crises with serious nuclear backgrounds are spreading rapidly, from the Middle East to the Korean Peninsula, passing through the Russian invasion of Ukraine,” he criticized.

Despite the warnings of the possible consequences of the current geopolitical instability, the secretary general has affirmed that he sees “signs of hope”.

Thus, he recalled that in June members of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons met for the first time to develop a roadmap towards a world free of these doomsday weapons. Meanwhile, she has recalled, this week the Tenth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is being held in New York.

“Today, from this sacred space, I call on the members of this Treaty to work urgently to eliminate the arsenals that threaten our future,” Guterres urged.