Opening Plenary
2004 World Conference against A and H Bombs
Pierre Villard
Co-president
French Peace Movement
Dear friends,
Permit me first to extend to you all the friendships of the French
Peace Movement and to thank our friends in Gensuikyo who organize
this event. Allow me also to greet our friends Hihakusha and express
a special homage to their struggle.
The cooperation with Japanese pacifists is essential to us for building
another world set free of wars and nuclear weapons. This is why
I am very proud of being here and I hope that our meetings will
allow us to strengthen the ties between our movements for the elimination
of nuclear weapons from the whole world and to develop actions so
that the NPT Review Conference to be held next May will see concrete
advances for nuclear disarmament.
For the French Peace Movement, beyond the proliferation, it is the
question of disarmament that is essential today. We will have to
make strenuous efforts so that this question is considered at its
just value in the process of changing the world. How to change the
world loaded with nuclear weapons? How to meet the social needs
with world military spending that has exceeded thousand billions
of dollars a year, which is more than in the worst period of the
Cold War? It is inconceivable. This is why we attach great importance
to on-going convergence of anti-globalization movements, antiwar
movements and all social movements. We are working to make them
alive at the heart of the European Social Forums.
In France, we have a huge information gap to fill by educating
the public on nuclear disarmament because many of French citizens
don’t know exactly the situation. And the fact is that for many
years French government is doing as the other nuclear powers are
doing : they are modernizing their nuclear weapons.
For this education, we have organized on two occasions nuclear disarmament
days with our French partners of the Abolition 2000 network to inform
and train our activists. Last January, the French Peace Movement
proposed to its partners a nationwide opinion campaign. The campaign
uses a communication material explaining nuclear weapons and the
NPT by relying on the idea that the NPT has served as international
law for 30 years and that it is time to apply it. This campaign
invites the citizens to lobby their local assembly members and members
of European Parliament as well as the President of the Republic
so that France honors its commitments, in particular Article 6 of
the NPT and that she takes initiative in view of 2005. For the moment,
there are 41 French national organizations participating in the
campaign: pacifist movements, trade unions, political parties, feminist
or anti-globalization assoctiations. During the year 2004-2005,
we will organize manifestations and citizens’ inspections on the
armament sites. Manifestations are already scheduled in the Ile
Longue in Brittany and Taverny near Paris on October 10 as well
as in Istres near Marseille on November 13. These initiatives are
organized in the framework of the Decade for the promotion of peace
culture and non-violence because nuclear weapons are incompatible
with the culture of peace.
In this campaign, the committees of the French Peace Movement will
organize numerous debates, especially in universities, high schools
and cafes.
2005 will mark the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. We have proposed to many of our partners, Japanese,
British, Italian, Spanish, Ukrainian, and others to organize in
Hiroshima next year an international event of young people for the
culture of peace and the elimination of nuclear weapons. Our ambition
is to make a hundred of young French take part in that meeting.
Another hundred of animators of local committees of the French Peace
Movement should also be present next year. There will therefore
be 200 French in Japan next year in August to say “No more Hiroshimas,
no more Nagasakis”. Abolish Now Nuclear Weapons.
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