Japanese atomic bomb survivor group Nihon Hidankyo wins Nobel Peace Prize

Oslo (AFP): The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday (Oct 11) awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.

The group, founded in 1956, received the honour “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,” said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The co-head of the group expressed surprise at winning the award.

“Never did I dream this could happen,” Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes.

“It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace,” he said.

But “if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won’t end there,” he warned. “Politicians should know these things.”

The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the international “nuclear taboo” that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was “under pressure”.

“This year’s prize is a prize that focuses on the necessity of upholding this nuclear taboo. And we all have a responsibility, particularly the nuclear powers,” Frydnes told reporters.

Moscow has repeatedly brandished the nuclear threat in a bid to dissuade the West from supporting Ukraine, which has been fending off Russia’s invasion since February 2022.

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin updated his country’s nuclear doctrine, saying the country would allow the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states when they are supported by nuclear powers — a clear reference to Ukraine and its Western backers.

The new rules would also allow Russia to unleash a nuclear response in the event of a “massive” air attack, Putin said.

Greater destructive power

Japan’s Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said the award for Nihon Hidankyo was “extremely meaningful”.

The Nobel committee noted that next year will mark 80 years since two American atomic bombs killed an estimated 120,000 inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and a comparable number later died of burn and radiation injuries.

Frydnes noted that “today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power. They can kill millions and would impact the climate catastrophically.”

“A nuclear war could destroy our civilisation,” he warned.

The committee noted that nuclear powers are modernising and upgrading their arsenals, and new countries “appear to be preparing to acquire nuclear weapons”.

There are currently nine nuclear-armed states, a list that has grown rather than shrunk over the years: the United States, Russia, France, Britain, China, India, Pakistan, North Korea, and likely Israel.

A report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) in June noted that with rising geopolitical tensions in the world, nuclear powers were modernising their arsenals.

In February 2023, Russia announced it was suspending its participation in the New START treaty, the last remaining arms control treaty between the world’s two main nuclear powers, Russia and the United States.

More operational warheads

In January, there were 12,121 nuclear warheads in the world, Sipri said.

“While the global total of nuclear warheads continues to fall as Cold War-era weapons are gradually dismantled, regrettably we continue to see year-on-year increases in the number of operational nuclear warheads,” Sipri director Dan Smith said.

This is not the first time the Nobel Peace Prize has honoured disarmament efforts.

In 1975, the prize went to Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War won in 1985. In 1995 it went to Joseph Rotblat and his Pugwash movement.

In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency and its director Mohamed ElBaradei won the prize, and in 2017 it went to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).

Last year, the Nobel was awarded to imprisoned women’s rights campaigner Narges Mohammadi for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran.

The Nobel Prizes consist of a diploma, a gold medal and a $1 million prize sum.

They will be presented at ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist and prize creator Alfred Nobel.- AFP