Letter to Morning Star:
I was really surprised that the Morning Star, which is the best newspaper for reports on the
actions of the global peace movement, did not publish any articles on either the
annual peace commemorations at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan to mark the74th
anniversary of the atomic immolation of both cities in August 1945.
Inexplicably, neither did you publish any photographs in your regular
Saturday ‘struggle on the streets’ page of photos of protests around the world.
On 6 August, Hiroshima 's
Mayor Kazumi Matsui – in peace declaration speech- told the international gathering
of some some 50,000 peace activists from 90 countries at the Peace Memorial
Park near ‘Ground Zero’ in his city.
"I call on the government of the only country to experience a
nuclear weapon in war to accede to the hibakusha's (atomic bomb survivors')
request that the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons be signed and
ratified.” (The TPNW was backed at the United Nations in July 2017 with the
support of 122 nations.)
Mayor Matsui added "I urge Japan's leaders to manifest the
pacifism of the Japanese Constitution by displaying leadership in taking the
next step toward a world free from nuclear weapons."
United Nations’ Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his
message, "The world is indebted to" [people in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, the other A-bombed city,] "for their courage and moral
leadership in reminding us all about the human cost of nuclear war."
Three days later in Nagasaki, Mayor Tomihisa Taue used his city’s memorial
ceremony to to back Hiroshima’ Mayor Matsui call on Japan’s government to immediately
sign a U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons.
As
a step toward joining the treaty, Mayor Taue called on Japan “to seize the
trend toward denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and to initiate efforts
to make Northeast Asia a nuclear-free zone where all countries coexist under,
not a ‘nuclear umbrella,’ but a ‘non-nuclear umbrella.'”
Civil
society groups including A-bomb survivors have “shown the power time and again
to change the world,” he said, citing the important role played by citizens in
concluding the treaty. “The power of a single individual is small but by no
means weak.”
Referring
to the review of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty next spring, the keystone
of the international nuclear disarmament regime, Taue said, “All the nuclear
states should recall the meaning of the treaty.”
Mayor
Taue also rightly called on the United States and Russia to “assume
responsibility as nuclear superpowers” by setting a specific course to
“drastically reduce nuclear stockpiles.”
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