Japan Press Weekly

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2018 January 31 - February 6 [POLITICS]

PM Abe refuses to sign Hibakusha's antinuke petition

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo on January 31 rejected a request to sign a Hibakusha petition urging all countries to join the UN treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons.

Regarding the Hibakusha-led signature drive, Abe refused to endorse it as called for by a Democratic Party lawmaker at an Upper House Budget Committee meeting, by saying that the N-ban pact is critical of nuclear deterrence.

Currently, 976 municipal heads, the majority of all municipalities in Japan, support the Hibakusha no-nuke petition campaign.

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Kawasaki Akira of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, on January 31 announced that the award winner "has not received any response to this day" from Japan's Prime Minister Office in regard to the request the NGO had made twice for a meeting with the prime minister.

According to Kawasaki, ICAN late last year, ahead of a visit of ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Fihn to Japan in mid-January, sent the Cabinet Secretariat a letter expressing the ICAN leader's desire to pay a call on the Japanese prime minister and asking for a reply to the request. Kawasaki said that a secretary of the PM Office told him on the phone to "wait for a call". The scheduled visit of Fihn to Japan approached, but ICAN still did not hear anything from the PM Office. Therefore, ICAN again sent the Japanese government a letter to the same effect, but in vain, Kawasaki explained.

He said, "It is regrettable that the Cabinet Secretariat showed no reaction at all to our request."

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Reportedly, PM Abe was having dinner with LDP parliamentarians on the day Fihn had intended to visit him, it was learned on February 3.

Past related articles:
> Pope calls photo of Nagasaki A-bomb victim ‘fruit of war’ [January 18, 2018]
> JCP Koike: It is shameful of Abe to refuse to meet ICAN chief [January 16, 2018]