Japanese atomic bomb survivors win Nobel Peace Prize
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The reading
This year's Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Nihon Hidankyo – a grassroots group established in 1956 by survivors of the atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The group has spent decades lobbying governments worldwide for the abolition of nuclear weapons. The Nobel committee said Nihon Hidankyo won the award, "for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons". Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the only places on Earth where such weapons have been used on civilian populations. Wikipedia says: "The effects of the atomic bombings killed 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 people in Nagasaki; roughly half occurred on the first day."
The news agency Reuters praised the ongoing legacy of Nihon Hidankyo. It wrote: "For decades - thanks in large part to the work of Nihon Hidankyo – the destruction unleashed on the two Japanese cities was widely seen as a lesson from history that using nuclear weapons again was too appalling to contemplate." However, rising tensions in the world today mean we are closer to the brink of nuclear war than ever before. Russia has warned that the USA's support of Ukraine increases the risks of nuclear conflict. There are fears that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, North Korea has declared it is accelerating efforts to become "a military superpower and a nuclear power".
Sources:
- https://www.reuters.com/world/nobel-prize-is-warning-world-nuclear-brink-2024-10-11/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
- https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20241011/p2g/00m/0in/055000c
- https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15463081
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