Blind persons with signatures in braille to petition U.N. for nuclear ban

As many as 10,000 signatures in braille calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons will be handed to the United Nations by Japan's blind persons' association. Representatives of the Japanese Council of the Visually Impaired (chair, Kakimoto Hitoshi) announced this at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan.

On the occasion of the U.N. Disarmament Week (October 24-30), the association will dispatch two representatives, Sanpei Kazuhisa and Ogata Junko, both totally blind, to the United Nations from October 20. They will hand over collected signatures and have exchanges with American groups of handicapped in New York, and explain to the world the abnormal situation in which the human rights of handicapped persons are being terribly abused in Japan.

They will visit the U.S. as part of the delegation of the Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo) to the U.N.

Ogata said to the press, "Once a war breaks out, those disabled and the weak will be the first to fall victim. War produces disabled persons, so I want to call on the U.N. for more actions for peace."

Sanpei, who took part in this year's World Conference against A&H Bombs, referred to the UN document on the International Year of the Disabled Persons (1981) as denouncing war as the biggest violence producing disabled persons.

A note of Ogata and Sanpei addressed to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan states: "On behalf of visually disabled people in Japan, we call on the United Nations to immediately act for the total ban and elimination of nuclear weapons. We are wishing for a new world without any new disabled persons to be produced by wars."

The signatures in braille have been collected at schools for the blind and braille libraries. (end)