The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Japan’s Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, on Friday ( October 11 ), as a pro-poor nation’s message to nations with nuclear weapons not to use them.
Testimony to the only two atomic bombs always to be used in fight, members of the group, which is also known as Hibakusha, have dedicated their lives to the battle for a nuclear-free earth.
The Norway Nobel Committee cited Hibakusha as the recipient of the Peace Prize for its efforts to bring about a world free of atomic weapons and for showing through see evidence that nuclear weapons must never be used again.
” The Hibakusha support us to identify the inexplicable, to assume the unfathomable, and to miraculously grasp the inexplicable pain and suffering caused by atomic weapons”, the committee said.
Without naming certain nations, Joergen Watne Frydnes, head of the Norway Nobel Committee, warned that nuclear countries does not comprehend using nuclear weaponry.
” Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater dangerous power. They may kill millions and may impact the environment catastrophically”, he told a press meeting.
” A nuclear conflict may destroy our society”.
Frydnes praised” the unusual efforts” made by Nihon Hidankyo and other Hibakusha members to “help establish the nuclear taboo”
So, it is alarming that this stigma against the use of nuclear weapons is currently being put under pressure, he said.
The United States dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, marking its 80th celebration.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has frequently put a spotlight on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently with its 2017 award to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons ( ICAN ).
The Nobel Peace Prize, for 11 million Scandinavian jewels, or about US$ 1 million, is due to be presented in Oslo on Dec 10, the celebration of the demise of Swedish entrepreneur Alfred Nobel, who founded the honours in his 1895 can.