A representative for this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, atomic bomb survivors' group Nihon Hidankyo, said on Wednesday (December 11) nuclear weapons should never be allowed to be used again, Reuters reports.
“Ensuring that these weapons must not ever be allowed to be used again, having public opinion and also having political discussions, political negotiations through diplomacy as well, working towards this is an urgent issue,” Nihon Hidankyo co-chair Terumi Tanaka, 92, told a press conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere.
Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of survivors of the 1945 nuclear bombings of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is campaigning for a world free of nuclear weapons using witness testimony.
Tanaka also said Russian President Vladimir Putin did not truly understand the destructive power of nuclear weapons.
He was referring to threats made by Putin and other senior Russian officials to use nuclear weapons if necessary to counter what they see as an aggressive and hostile West as the war in Ukraine grinds towards its third anniversary.
On Tuesday (December 10) Tanaka, along with co-chairs Shigemitsu Tanaka, 84, and Toshiyuki Mimaki, 82, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony held at Oslo City Hall.
