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2020 World Conference against A and H Bombs (online）Appeal for Your Support of the 2020 World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (online)May 8, 2020 Dear friends in Japan and overseas in our cause of a nuclear weapon-free, peaceful and just world, We will convene the 2020 World Conference against A and H Bombs centering on August 6 and 9 in this 75th year of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the theme: “With the Hibakusha, Let Us Achieve a Nuclear Weapon-Free, Peaceful and Just World – for the Future of the Humankind and Our Planet”. Facing the COVID-19 pandemic, we have intensely discussed how we should play the role of the movement against A and H bombs. We thus decided that despite difficult conditions where people cannot assemble, we will do everything we can in working with the Hibakusha to keep appealing to the world the need to abolish nuclear weapons. We do not think that our World Conference will be a conference that is obliged to be scaled down or somehow limited. Rather, making full use of new conditions and possibilities, we are determined to make it successful in delivering our message more powerfully to many more people than before around the world. At the 2020 World Conference, we want to bring together the wisdom of the anti-nuclear movements from around the world and set out the direction to proceed in the coming period. To this end, the Conference will include an online International Meeting. The Conference will also invite representatives of the UN and national governments. We further propose to launch the “Peace Wave”, the international joint actions at the grass-roots with the abolition of nuclear weapons as the common objective and the signature collection in support of the “Appeal of the Hibakusha” as a common form of action. The Peace Wave will move westwards along with the rotation of the earth, linking with the 2020 World Conference against A and H Bombs. We call on all friends in Japan and internationally to support this appeal, prepare to participate in the Conference and plan many varieties of creative actions in your cities and countries in keeping with your own conditions. This year marks the 75th anniversary of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the founding of the United Nations on the basis of the world's determination to prevent the outbreak of a third world war. In January 1946, the first session of the UNGA set out the direction of the post-war politics by resolving the “elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.” The current reality of the international politics is far from this universally agreed goal. As the result of the nuclear arms race, the world sees more than 14,000 nuclear warheads stockpiled or deployed. The US and other nuclear powers seek their own interests first and are proceeding with modernization and reinforcement of their nuclear arsenals. The global military expenditures reached an unprecedented amount of 1.917 trillion dollars (some 20 trillion yen) and are still increasing. This, in the midst of all when the people around the world are suffering from climate change, COVID-19, growing social and economic gaps, poverty and other crises. As the UN Secretary General Guterrez called for “an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world”, what is urgently needed now is international cooperation and solidarity, not the confrontation and division based on the “My country first” principle. We must call for a major shift in the direction to peace and cooperation to achieve a world based on the order of peace provided for by the UN Charter, gender equality, justice and sustainability, by putting an end to conflicts and wars, abolishing nuclear weapons, slashing military expenditures, strengthening the measures on COVID-19, and supporting people’s livings, employments and businesses. What Japan should do now is not to support the US nuclear build-up and revise the Constitution, to massively purchase jet fighters and anti-ballistic missiles as told by the US leaders or to construct a military base at Henoko, Okinawa in service of the US forces. Japan should join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons as the only A-bombed country and stand in the forefront of the effort of achieving a world free of nuclear weapons. Dear friends, Also go to |
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