The ‘hibakusha’ reproach the Japanese Government for not having joined the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPAN)
12 (EUROPA PRESS)
The Confederation of Organizations of Victims of the Atomic Bomb (Nihon Hidankyo) celebrated this Saturday the awarding of the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its work for the abolition of nuclear weapons throughout the world, although it regretted that nuclear disarmament ” has not progressed as expected.
“Nuclear disarmament has not advanced as expected,” said one of the entity’s co-presidents, Terumi Tanaka, 92, during a press conference held in Tokyo and reported by the newspaper ‘Asahi Shinbum’.
Seven members of Nihon Hidankyo participated in the press conference and highlighted that the official motivation for granting the prize reflects that “the requests of the survivors of the atomic bomb must be common to all people, throughout the world.”
Another of the attendees, Shigemitsu Tanaka, 83, stressed that the awarding of the prize has been a surprise and a joy. “Yesterday was the best day. I think we have followed in the footsteps of our predecessors, that we have continued on the right path,” he noted.
Tanaka has reproached the Japanese Government for not having ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPAN), an initiative signed by a large part of Latin American countries, Ireland, Austria and some African and Southeast Asian countries. “The Nobel Peace Prize would be a great reason for it to be ratified,” he argued.
He has particularly criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for recently stating that Japan should “share the nuclear burden” with the United States, its close ally. “Sharing the nuclear burden is out of the question,” stressed Tanaka, who hopes to meet with Ishiba and “have a thorough conversation and convince him that it is a mistake.”
JAPAN COULD BECOME AN “AGGRESSOR COUNTRY”
Nihon Hidankyo Deputy Secretary General Seiko Wada, 80, has warned that “a country that was bombed in a war could become an aggressor country.” “We cannot allow it to happen,” he stressed.
At the event they also addressed the future of the antinuclear movement in Japan, since the branches in eleven prefectures have had to cease their work and only 36 active prefectures remain. “It is true that there are fewer and fewer of us. There are no people who want to assume executive positions and we have economic problems,” acknowledged Deputy Secretary General Jiro Hamazumi, 78 years old. “People tell us ‘we don’t want you to lower the Nihon Hidankyo flag’. We want to find a way to continue,” he indicated.
Nihon Hidankyo, a confederation of organizations of survivors of the 1945 US bombings, the so-called ‘hibakusha’, has received the Nobel for its efforts “to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through the testimony of its witnesses that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
The confederation was created in August 1956 by 800 survivors of the bombings, in memory of the approximately 120,000 dead and hundreds of thousands of others affected by the atomic bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the intention of conveying a message to future generations against the use of nuclear weapons, represented by the organization’s symbol, an orizuru, a paper crane surrounded by an ellipse that represents peace and harmony.
With this award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee also wants to remember “the increasing pressure” on the ‘nuclear taboo’ today, the international norm that declares the use of nuclear weapons as “morally unacceptable.”
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