The Nobel Peace Prize goes to Hiroshima survivors opposed to nuclear weapons

(Oslo) The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on Friday to the Japanese anti-atomic weapons group Nihon Hidankyo, which brings together survivors of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, at a time when countries like Russia are threatening to break this taboo.

Nihon Hidankyo is being honored “for his efforts towards a world without nuclear weapons and for demonstrating, through testimonies, that nuclear weapons should never be used again,” said the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel committee, Jørgen Watne Frydnes .

The price “emphasizes the need to maintain the nuclear taboo,” he stressed. “And we all have a responsibility [pour le faire]particularly nuclear powers.

This choice comes as Moscow has repeatedly raised the nuclear threat to dissuade the West from providing military aid to Ukraine, which has been trying for two and a half years to repel the Russian invasion launched in February 2022. .

Last month, President Vladimir Putin changed Russia’s doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons, saying he could use them in particular in the event of a “massive launch” of air attacks against his country.

The planet is preparing to commemorate the 80th next year^e anniversary of the first two nuclear bombings in history which caused a total of some 214,000 deaths and precipitated the capitulation of Japan as well as the end of the Second World War.

Founded in 1956, Nihon Hidankyo is an organization that represents irradiated survivors of these bombings, whose ranks are dwindling over time.

“I never imagined that this could happen,” reacted, with tears in his eyes, the co-president of the group, Toshiyuki Mimaki, to journalists in Japan.

The group also drew a parallel with a hot topic in the news by estimating that the situation in Gaza is “like Japan 80 years ago”.

Modernization of arsenals

Today, nine countries possess atomic weapons – the United States, Russia, France, Great Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea and most likely Israel – a list which tends to grow longer rather than ‘to shrink.

With increasing geopolitical tensions in the world, nuclear powers are modernizing their arsenals, researchers from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) highlighted in June.

In February 2023, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the New START treaty, the latest control treaty limiting the strategic nuclear forces of Russia and the United States.

As of January, of the approximately 12,121 nuclear warheads in existence worldwide, approximately 9,585 were available for potential use, they noted.

Even though “the total number of nuclear warheads continues to decline as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled”, an increase in the “number of operational nuclear warheads” is observed from year to year. the part of the nuclear powers, lamented the director of Sipri, Dan Smith.

In the past, the Nobel Peace Prize has repeatedly rewarded efforts to ban these weapons of mass destruction.

In 1975, it was the Soviet dissident Andreï Sakharov who was awarded the prize, in 1985 the International Association of Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, in 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash movement, in 2005 the International Agency for atomic energy and its director Mohamed El-Baradei, and in 2017 the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

The Nobel, which consists of a diploma, a gold medal and a check for 11 million Swedish crowns (approximately 1.46 million Canadian dollars), will be formally presented on December 10 in Oslo.