Peace Protest In Hiroshima
Anti-war protesters rallied outside Hiroshima’s Atomic Bomb Dome on Wednesday, condemning Japan’s military expansion and renewed debate over nuclear policy on the eve of the 81st anniversary of the US atomic bombing.
Footage shows hundreds of people holding paper lanterns, light sticks and signs reading ‘No nukes’ and ‘Nuclear Abolition’ in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. They later sang ‘Give Back the People’, based on an anti-war poem by Hiroshima poet Sankichi Toge.
“At a time when the threat of nuclear weapons is being brandished globally, Japan really ought to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and pursue a diplomacy based on dialogue,” protester Takahashi said.
“You cannot eliminate war from the world by using nuclear weapons as a threat. I sincerely hope that solutions will be achieved through dialogue. That, I believe, is the role of Hiroshima – and of Japan, with its Article 9 Constitution,” fellow protester Yamane added.
Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.
Nuclear Policy Debate Grows
Protesters accused the government of abandoning Japan’s post-war commitment to peace, arguing that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi had failed to live up to her role as leader of a peace-oriented nation.
Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles state that the country will not possess or produce nuclear weapons, or allow them to be introduced into its territory. The government says it continues to uphold the policy.
However, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has said Japan should discuss its defence policy without excluding any options, while also stressing that the principles remain government policy.
“A massive military expansion budget is the clearest evidence of a headlong rush toward war, and Prime Minister Takaichi is the very person who pushed it forward all at once – and with a smile on her face, no less,” Megumi Toba said. “Then there is Shinjiro Koizumi. That remark by the Defence Minister was appalling, too.”
“Spending 40 trillion yen on military expenses – prioritising the military over the lives of the people – is something I simply cannot forgive,” Tange said. “I believe Ms Takaichi should step down from her position.”
Japan Defence Expansion Criticised
Japan’s five-year Defence Buildup Programme, covering the 2023 to 2027 financial years, sets the scale of the buildup at about 43 trillion yen, with around 40.5 trillion yen in defence-related expenditure.
“The current shift in Japanese policy toward the right, particularly the disregard for the pacifist Constitution and moves to amend it in a regressive manner, is a major development that threatens to destabilise both the post-war relationship between Japan and South Korea and the order of East Asia as a whole,” explained protester Lee Jun-kyu.
The rally came one day before Hiroshima marked 81 years since the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city on August 6, 1945.
The City of Hiroshima estimates that roughly 140,000 people died by the end of that year from injuries, burns and the acute effects of radiation.
Article by Viory
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