Japan Press Weekly

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2017 September 13 - 19 TOP3 [PEACE]

Japan’s absence in N-ban treaty will evoke global distrust of Japan

The 72nd session of the UN General Assembly started on September 12 at the UN headquarters in NYC, and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons which was adopted in July will open for signatures on September 20. UNGA President Miroslav Lajcak in his opening statement said, “Soon many states will sign the first ever agreement on eliminating nuclear weapons.”

With the treaty signing process approaching, a group of atomic-bomb survivors (Hibakusha) and antinuke peace activists on September 13 visited the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in an attempt to persuade the Japanese government to sign/ratify the international treaty outlawing nuclear weapons. They also asked for clear explanations why Japan will not join this treaty.

“We really wanted to know the reason, but government officials just repeated the same cliché as before,” said Tanaka Terumi to reporters at the Upper House lawmakers’ office building after meeting with government officials. He is the secretary general of the world’s largest Hibakusha organization, the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bombs Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo).

Moritaki Haruko, a coleader of the Hiroshima Alliance for Nuclear Weapons Abolition, at the same press conference voiced concern that Japan’s refusal to sign the ban treaty will evoke profound distrust of the Japanese government in the international community.

During the meeting with MOFA bureaucrats, they once again urged the government to be “a bridge between nuclear powers and nonnuclear powers” and to call on nuclear-weapons states to be State Parties to the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty.

Past related articles:
> World Con pledges to take step forward toward abolition of nuclear weapons by utilizing historic UN treaty [August 10, 2017]
> ‘Mayors for Peace’ calls on all countries to join UN N-ban treaty [August 11, 2017]