Japanese anti-nuclear organisation awarded 2024 Nobel Peace Prize

ABC News, By Aoife Hilton with wires, 11 Oct 24

In short:

Japanese Hibakusha organisation Nihon Hidankyo has been awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.

Hibakusha is the grassroots movement for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945.

Norwegian Nobel Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said the organisation was chosen for its efforts to establish a worldwide “nuclear taboo”.

The 2024 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Japanese Hibakusha organisation Nihon Hidankyo, the Chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee has announced at a press conference in Oslo.

Hibakusha is the grassroots movement for survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings in 1945.

Committee Chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes said Nihon Hidankyo had become “the largest and most influential Hibakusha organisation in Japan” and had made efforts for “a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating … that nuclear weapons must never be used again”.

He said the Nobel committee “wishes to honour all survivors who, despite physical suffering and painful memories, have chosen to use their costly experience to cultivate hope and engagement for peace”.

The ‘nuclear taboo’

He credited the organisation with contributing to the “nuclear taboo”, referring to the status quo wherein world powers avoid nuclear weapon use.

“Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen,” he said.

“Today’s nuclear weapons have far greater destructive power.”

Mr Fryndes stressed it was “alarming that today this taboo against the use of nuclear weapons is under pressure” with new countries acquiring nuclear weapons and others bolstering their arsenals………………………………………………………………………………….

United Nations spokesperson in Geneva, Alessandra Vellucci, said the movement for Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors “fights against … even the idea that such a war can be fought again”.

“We’ve seen the effects of the bomb in the Second World War. We have got now weapons that are so many more times more powerful than those that we use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” she said…………………………………………………………………………………………..

Peace Prize winner compares post-war Japan to Gaza

Nihon Hidankyo’s co-head Toshiyuki Mimaki, a survivor himself, was standing by at the Hiroshima City Hall for the announcement.

He said the prize would give a major boost towards efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible.

“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved.”

“Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished.”

He added the situation for children in Gaza is similar to the situation in Japan at the end of World War II.

“In Gaza, children in blood are being held. It’s like in Japan 80 years ago,” Mr Mimaki said……………………………………………

Prize will be presented in December

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has regularly put focus on the issue of nuclear weapons, most recently with its award to the the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), who won the award in 2017.

“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 in a statement.

The Peace Prize is worth 11 million Swedish crowns, or about $1.57 million.

It is due to be presented in Oslo on December 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will………………………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/nobel-peace-prize/104464170