Japanese organisation Nihon Hidankyo wins 2024 Nobel Peace Prize
Japanese
organisation Nihon
Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, won the
Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, in a warning to countries who have
nuclear weapons not to use them.
Many
survivors of the only two nuclear bombs ever to be used in conflict, who are
known in Japanese as "hibakusha", have dedicated their lives to the
struggle for a nuclear-free world.
The
Norwegian Nobel Committee said in its citation the group was receiving the
Peace Prize for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for
demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used
again".
"The
hibakusha help us to describe the indescribable, to think the unthinkable, and
to somehow grasp the incomprehensible pain and suffering caused by nuclear
weapons," the committee said.
"I
can't believe it's real," Nihon Hidankyo co-chair Toshiyuki Mimaki told a
press conference in Hiroshima, site of the Aug. 6, 1945 atomic bombing during
the closing stages of World War Two, as he held back tears and pinched his
cheek.
Mimaki,
a survivor himself, said the award would
give a major boost to its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear
weapons was possible.
"(The
win) will be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear
weapons and everlasting peace can be achieved," he said. "Nuclear
weapons should absolutely be abolished."
In
Japan, hibakusha, many of whom carried visible wounds from radiation burns or
developed radiation-related diseases such as leukaemia, were often forcibly
segregated from society and faced discrimination when seeking employment or
marriage in the years following the war.
There
were 106,825 atomic bomb survivors registered in Japan as of March this year,
data from the country's health ministry showed, with an average age of 85.6
years.
Without
naming specific countries, Joergen Watne Frydnes, chair of the Norwegian Nobel
Committee, warned that nuclear nations should not contemplate using atomic
weapons.
"In
a world ridden (with) conflicts, where nuclear weapons is definitely part of
it, we wanted to highlight the importance of strengthening the nuclear taboo,
the international norm, against the use of nuclear weapons," Frydnes told
Reuters.
"We
see it as very alarming that the nuclear taboo ... is being reduced by
threatening, but also how the situation in the world where the nuclear powers
are modernising and upgrading their arsenals."
Frydnes
said the world should listen to the "painful and dramatic stories of the
hibakusha".
"These
weapons should never be used again anywhere in the world ... Nuclear war could
mean the end of humanity, (the) end of our civilisation," he said in an
interview.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned the West of potential nuclear
consequences since Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
He
declared last month that Russia could use nuclear weapons if
it was struck with conventional missiles, and that Moscow would consider any
assault on it supported by a nuclear power to be a joint attack.
This
month, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country would speed up steps
towards becoming a military superpower with
nuclear weapons and would not rule out using them if it came under enemy
attack, while widening conflict in the Middle East has prompted some experts to
speculate that Iran may restart its efforts
to acquire a nuclear bomb.
Next
year will mark the 80th anniversary of the dropping of nuclear bombs by the
United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August of 1945 that forced Japan's surrender.
With
the award, the committee was drawing attention to a "very dangerous
situation" in the world, according to Dan Smith, head of the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute.
"If
there is a military conflict, there is a risk of it escalating to nuclear
weapons ... They (Nihon Hidankyo) are really an important voice to remind us
about the destructive nature of nuclear weapons," he told Reuters.
Smith
said the Committee had achieved "a triple strike" with the prize:
drawing attention to the human suffering of nuclear bomb survivors; the danger
of nuclear weapons; and that the world has survived without their use for
nearly 80 years.
The
Norwegian Nobel Committee has regularly put focus on the issue of nuclear
weapons, most recently with its award to ICAN, the International Campaign to
Abolish Nuclear Weapons, who won the award in 2017.
This
year's award also echoes those to Elie Wiesel in 1986 and Russia's Memorial in
2022 by highlighting the importance of keeping the memory of horrific events
alive as a warning to the future.
It
is the second Nobel Peace Prize for a Japanese recipient in the prize's
123-year history, 50 years after former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato won it in
1974 "for his contribution to stabilize conditions in the Pacific Rim area
and for signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty".
The
peace prize is the fifth Nobel awarded this week, after literature, chemistry, physics and medicine.
The
Nobel Peace Prize, worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1 million, is due
to be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish
industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the
awards in
his 1895 will.
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