UNITED NATIONS, Aug 09 (APP): Eighty years after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that the “only guarantee” against the use of nuclear weapons today is their “total elimination”.
Inspired by the hibakusha –the term used for the survivors of Hiroshima and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki at the end of World War Two — who turned their suffering into a powerful appeal for peace, the UN chief renewed his call for a world free of nuclear weapons in a video message to the 11th General Conference of Mayors for Peace in Nagasaki.
United against nuclear weapons, the conference is an opportunity for mayors from around the world to discuss and adopt key priorities in support of global denuclearisation.
“Nuclear weapons have no place in our world,” said Guterres in his video-message, as they only offer the “illusion of safety and the certainty of devastation,” he said.
Calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, the Secretary-General urged all participants at the conference to “keep mobilizing communities, inspiring young people, and building peace from the ground up.”
“I urge all States to recommit to nuclear disarmament,” he said.
“I commend Mayors for Peace for your unwavering commitment to a better world,” said the Secretary-General, as the organization aims at creating real momentum for the realization of a peaceful world without nuclear weapons.
In honour of the hibakusha, and in the memory of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Guterres made an impassioned call for action to end the nuclear threat once and for all.
Speaking later at the official memorial in Nagasaki to remember the dead, UN disarmament chief Izumi Nakamitsu said on behalf of Guterres that the shadow of nuclear weapons looms all too large.
“They have returned to the centre of national security strategies and are being brandished as tools of coercion. Meanwhile, military spending has reached record highs — while investments in peace and sustainable development falter,” she added.
“Peace and security cannot be achieved through an arms race,” she said, calling on countries to re-commit to the proven tools of disarmament; “dialogue, diplomacy, confidence building, transparency, and arms control and reduction.”
According to the Japanese media reports, after a moment of silence at 11:02 a.m., marking the time of the Nagasaki blast, Mayor Shiro Suzuki called on leaders to return to the principles of the U.N. Charter and show a concrete path toward abolishing nuclear weapons, warning that delay was “no longer permissible”.
“This is a crisis of human survival that is closing in on each and every one of us,” Suzuki told the crowd, estimated by Japanese media at 2,700.
He quoted the testimony of a survivor to illustrate the reality of a nuclear attack: “Around me were people whose eyeballs had popped out… Bodies were strewn about like stones.”
“Is it not this ‘global citizen’ perspective that will serve as the driving force behind stitching back together our fragmented world?” Suzuki asked, calling for a solution based on mutual understanding and solidarity.
The U.S. military is believed to have chosen Nagasaki as a target due to its significance as a major industrial and port city.
The city’s geographical features, including its hilly terrain, were also thought to concentrate the blast.
The Japanese city was hit on August 9, 1945, when the United States dropped a 10,000-pound plutonium-239 bomb, instantly killing some 27,000 of Nagasaki’s estimated 200,000 people.
“This is a crisis of human survival that is closing in on each and every one of us,” Mayor Suzuki said, calling for a concrete path to abolishing nuclear weapons.
Representatives from 95 countries and territories, including nuclear superpower the United States, and Israel — which neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons — attended the annual ceremony at the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Park for the milestone year.
Russia, which possesses the world’s largest nuclear stockpile, was also represented.