June 22, 2022

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Kasai Akira on June 20 attended a side event of the first meeting of States Parties to the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) beginning on the following day in Vienna, Austria. Kasai was visiting there to attend the TPNW meeting as an observer.

The event named the “Parliamentarians Conference” was co-hosted by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and the Austrian Parliament. The conference took place with 36 parliamentarians from 16 countries participating and adopted a statement and an action plan.

Speaking at the conference, Kasai noted Russia’s repeated threat to use nuclear weapons under the escalating situation in Ukraine. He pointed out that this represents the real risk of the use of nuclear arms and proves that the nuclear deterrence theory has no power to prevent such a risk. He called on the participants to work toward achieving a world without nuclear weapons by making full use of the normative force of the TPNW.

In discussions on how to increase the number of countries joining the treaty, Kasai said there is a role parliamentarians can play in this regard. As an example, he proposed inviting survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Hibakusha) to each nation’s parliament to hear their stories.

Kasai reported that the JCP participated in TPNW negotiation meetings as a civil society member and worked hard to realize the treaty. He stressed that the Japanese government, an ally of the United States, should depart from the nuclear deterrence myth and participate in the TPNW in accordance with the demand of a large majority of Japanese as well as the majority of the global populate.

Past related article:
> JCP will attend 1st TPNW Con. while Japanese gov’t opts not to do so [June 16, 2022]