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Speech at the National Conference of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-UK
Hiroshi TAKA
The Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs
Dear friends,
It is a great honor for me to be invited to speak to this prominent
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament-UK. I take this opportunity to
extend the warmest greetings of solidarity from our movement against
A and H bombs and the Hibakusha, the surviving victims of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki.
Your movement is well known in Japan from its very early days.
Bertrand Russell never forgot to send his message of solidarity
to the World Conference against A and H Bombs since its outset in
the 1955; Peggy Duff, with her cigar, came to Japan very often to
help us to organize our conference; and all your delegates, including
Bruce Kent, Kate Hudson and Peter Leary, your student leader, kept
us reminded that CND was with us in our common cause to rid the
human race of the danger of nuclear annihilation.
In the worldwide action against the outrageous attack on Iraq,
your peace movement played a pioneering role. The rally of over
400 thousands people who filled in Trafalgar Square in September
two years ago and even bigger rallies that followed urged us to
rise in action together to say, "the people in the 21st century
no longer want war as means to resolve international conflict".
I hope that you will continue setting an example in attaining a
world without war and without nuclear weapons.
Friends,
Our movement against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs started in 1954
when the US conducted a hydrogen bomb test at the Bikini Atoll in
the Pacific on March 1, 1954. The damage caused by it triggered
spontaneous protest actions everywhere in Japan; a signature campaign
spread nationwide; and the number of the signatures collected reached
32 million in one year. Against this background, the 1st World Conference
against A and H Bombs was held in 1955, and our organization founded
on September 19 the same year by the organizations that ran the
signature campaigns and those that sponsored the world conference.
The annual, nationwide peace march started in 1958, the same year
you started your march to Aldermaston.
Through many ups and downs, successes and difficulties, we have
carried forward since then the three basic goals of: 1) prevention
of nuclear war, 2) a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons,
and 3) the relief and solidarity with the Hibakusha, the A-bomb
survivors. One recent successful campaign was a signature drive
based on the "Appeal from Hiroshima and Nagasaki" launched
in February 1985. In those days, when many still believed in nuclear
arms control, rather than nuclear disarmament, we boldly called
for a total ban and the elimination of nuclear weapons, by building
up the public opinion. For 15 years since then, over 60 million
peoples signed it and some 2,500 local governments, i.e., about
80% of all Japanese local governments, declared themselves nuclear
weapon-free. Your CND is one of the 12 organizations that launched
the appeal. In summer last year, we launched a new campaign entitled
"Abolition of nuclear weapons, now!" I take the liberty
to express our gratitude to Kate Hudson for appending her name as
a first signer.
At present, our first priority is to press the governments of
the Nuclear Five to fulfill their obligation to abolish their nuclear
arsenals, which they promised at the last NPT review conference
in May 2000. The next NPT Review Conference, scheduled for May next
year in New York, should not be a mere place where they repeat the
same "undertaking" or, worse, bury their promise. The
nuclear weapons states, however, do not show any sign to honor their
promise. The Bush Administration is even challenging to give a prominent
role to its nuclear arsenals in its notorious strategy of "preemptive
attack". The imperative for him is to render nuclear weapons
usable by removing the boundary between conventional and nuclear
weapons. At the 3rd Prep. Com. meeting for the next Review Conference,
the US refused to even refer to any positive agreement reached by
the last Review Conference, and made it impossible to reach any
further agreement. John R Bolton, assistant Secretary of State,
or better known as a neo-con leader, who led the US delegation,
demanded that the NPT's task was to take action against such countries
as Iran and North Korea, and "not focusing on article VI issues
that do not exist".
True, the nuclear development by North Korea, the uranium enrichment
in South Korea and other similar moves are a serious concern. But
our major problem is those thousands of nuclear weapons that already
exist and are ready for actual use. Though the proliferation problem
needs to be addressed, the nuclear double standard, like, "your
nukes are a threat to the national security, while our nukes are
a guarantee of the security", cannot help to resolve the problem.
For both the security of all counties and the prevention of the
proliferation, the swift implementation of their own promise is
the only right answer.
The 2004 World Conference against A and H Bombs in August focused
on action we should take to make a difference in the next review
conference and beyond, towards the 60th year of the A-bombing. Government
representatives of Mexico, a leading member of New Agenda Coalition
(NAC), Malaysia, the current chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)
and an assistant foreign minister of Egypt took active part in the
discussion throughout the 8 days conference.
The recommended actions agreed upon include: Support and mobilization
for the initiative of the Mayors for Peace, particularly for a major
international action in New York on May 1, next year; pressing all
governments to support NAC-sponsored and NAM-sponsored resolutions
in favor of the abolition of nuclear weapons in the 59th Session
of the UN General Assembly; urging such governments that rely their
security on a "nuclear umbrella" provided by a nuclear
weapons state to step out of it and join in the global effort for
a nuclear weapon-free world. The conference also called for a joint
presentation of tens of millions of signatures in support of the
appeal "Abolition, now" or any other call with a similar
goal to the Review Conference on its first day of May 2, 2005. The
government representatives discussed with their initiatives: Mexican
Ambassador de Alba informed us that NAC would work to build the
maximum support for the NAC resolution. He further announced that
his government would convene an international conference of nuclear
free zone countries in Mexico in Spring next year to mount pressure
on the nuclear weapons states. The Egyptian minister told us that
he would start groundwork to start negotiations for a total ban
at the ministerial conference of NAM on August 17-19, this year.
Now that the number of the governments that voted against the
total abolition at the UN General Assembly in December last year
was six and that the governments that opposed the reduction of non-strategic
nuclear weapons were only four, the key is to change the policy
of these four or six governments and their allies. For this, we
must make every effort to build mounting opinion and take action
as we did in opposition to the war on Iraq, this time to secure
the survival of the human race.
The abolition of nuclear weapons requires from the Japanese peace
movement a special effort to change the policy of our government.
Suffering twice the A-bombings, Japan declares in the Constitution
that it renounces forever the use of force as means to resolve international
conflict, and the "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other
war potential, will never be maintained." The Japanese leaders
have forgotten this. They throw their heart and soul into submission
to the Bush Administration, wanting their status to be elevated
as an "equal" Neo-Con partner.
The US leaders have sought for a long time to keep Japan as its
junior partner and use its territory as a forward base in their
world strategy. Yet, the current move goes beyond this realm. It
is to draw Japan into a direct military action of aggression in
US-initiated "preemptive" war, which includes the danger
of actual use of nuclear weapons. To make Japan a country that will
fight a war, they are eager to revise the Constitution without "wasting"
anymore time. Not only the conservative Liberal Democrats and Komeito,
but the Democratic Party also speaks of "creating a new constitution".
The blueprint of this was drawn by Richard Armitage, the present
deputy secretary of state, and his cohorts, including Paul Wolfowitz,
as early as in October 2000. Their paper, entitled "The United
States and Japan - Advancing toward a Mature Partnership",
urged Japan to accept the notion of "collective self-defense"
and go to war with its "partner". It further called for
the revision of the Constitution, enactment of the so-called "contingency"
law, and even what they call "reform that would require a pain"
from people. They said, the model of the new partnership was the
"special relationship between the USA and Great Britain",
totally forgetting that in that model, their partner was being seriously
challenged by the peace movement.
Japanese conservative leaders happily accommodate themselves to
these demands. Shinzo Abe, the secretary general of the Liberal
Democrats, made a speech at the Neo-Con think-tank American Enterprise
Institute on April 29 this year. He blatantly expressed his condolence
to the US soldiers in Iraq at the time the whole world was denouncing
the massacres in Farujya. His major point was that the equal partnership
between the US and Japan in fighting war was an ideal from the earliest
days, for which even among conservatives only a few took the bold
path. Then, he quoted the names of two former prime ministers, Nobusuke
Kishi, his grandfather, and Yasuhiro Nakasone. Note that both of
them were first-class war criminals imprisoned by the occupation
forces and brought back by the same occupation forces to the politics.
Abe showed hostility to Article 9, saying it is a "classic
example of an anachronism". Then he concludes that the "considerable
losses by groups advocating protection of the current Constitution
in the general election in November last year" made it possible
to bring the revision of the Constitution to a "real and present
issue".
A rise of such an opinion as: "Japan's acquisition of nuclear
weapons is one possible option to be considered in the future"
is by and large a spontaneous reaction to the nuclear development
of North Korea, though fanned by the "new threat" propaganda.
The LDP is exploiting this to scrap Japan's three non-nuclear principles
of "not possessing, not manufacturing and not allowing the
bringing-in of nuclear weapons", to make it easier the US forces
to engage in their nuclear mission.
Having said this, I should make one thing very clear. In spite
of all this, most politicians, even many conservatives are still
hesitant to openly advocate the revision of Article 9. They, too,
are aware that still a majority of people stand in favor of the
current Constitution, and where article 9 comes in, every poll shows
over 60% support it. It may be their chance, but it can be turned
to our chance, if the peace movement succeeds in uniting to bloc
the militarism.
Before concluding, I want to emphasize one simple fact. Where
peace and war are concerned, we are overwhelming majority. On the
eve of the attack on Iraq, Collin Powel listed 30 countries that
supported the planned attack. The list was impressive. Fifteen were
from former Soviet block, no county from the Arab world, and only
four in the whole Asia and the Pacific, including Afghanistan. So
I realized that they were a poor minority equipped with no reason
or no justice on their side.
Where nuclear weapons are concerned, this contrast is more striking.
The six governments who opposed the NAC resolution last December
were the US, the UK, France, India, Pakistan and Israel. Even the
majority of NATO members did not take common step with the US. Canada
even voted in support of the resolution.
Where our Constitution is concerned, those who openly advocate for
scrapping Article 9 are very far from being the majority.
Through experiences in the 20th century, including Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, we have come to understand that war can no longer be the
answer to international conflict, that nuclear weapons exist only
to be abolished. Yet this simple fact can be understood by the majority
citizens, only when the peace movements work very hard. And I believe
now is the time when we work very hard. Many thanks for your patient
attention. /end
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