By Euronews in Spanish with EFE
Published 06/08/2023 – 11:11•Last update 11:24
Hiroshima urges denuclearization on the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing with calls for a world without nuclear weapons.
Hiroshima urges denuclearization on the 78th anniversary of the US atomic bombing of the Japanese city. Three days later a similar bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
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During the commemoration there have been thousands of representatives from a hundred countries. The mayor, Kazumi Matsui, has urged politicians to abandon the idea of nuclear weapons as a deterrent.
“Leaders around the world must face the reality that the nuclear threats now being expressed by certain policymakers reveal the folly of nuclear deterrence theory,” Matsui said, adding that “concrete steps must be taken immediately to lead us from a dangerous present to an ideal world”.
For his part, the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, has pointed out that the path towards nuclear disarmament has become more dangerous due to threats from Russia: “the path towards nuclear disarmament has become more dangerous due to the deepening of divisions International Wars and Russia’s Nuclear Threats”. Kishida added that “it is crucial to reinvigorate the international drive towards a world without nuclear weapons once again.”
This Sunday, a minute of silence was also observed at 8:15 in the morning (23:15 Saturday GMT), the exact time that the American bomber Enola Gay dropped the uranium bomb and detonated it over the city on the 6th August 1945.
The statements by Kishida and Matsui come after the leaders of the Group of Seven met in this Japanese city last May, where they made a historic visit to the Hiroshima Peace Museum and Park and listened to the words of the mayor and the survivors of the bombing -“hibakusha”-.
This visit was criticized by some “hibakusha”, since they consider that the declaration and some of the gestures that came out of the visit were “insufficient” to achieve a true denuclearization and that the horror experienced would not be repeated again.
The G7 has several nuclear powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom and France and the former also has weapons deployed in two other countries: Germany and Italy, while Japan and Canada are covered by Washington’s nuclear protection “umbrella”. .
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