NGO Millennium Forum will be held from May 22 to 26 at the United
Nations Headquarters in New York.
Hidankyo joins in the Forum as members of a joint delegation
of "Message of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" Network.
In February, Hidankyo sent a letter to the Secretariat of the
Millennium Forum, in which it requested that three proposals will be discussed
at the Forum.
The three proposals are:
1. The continuing existence of nuclear weapons, the menace caused
by them, and accidental, miscalculated or intentional use of those weaponspose serious threat to the survival of the entire humanity and all lives
on earth. The abolition of nuclear weapons is the most urgent task
for securing a peaceful 21st century. We request that this task will
form the keynote of the whole of the Forum and be discussed as the task
of highest priority.
2. The use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in August 1945 claimed the lives of more than 200,000 people, and has left
the survivors with aftereffects from radiation and fear for their possible
outbreak. Moreover, in the process of production and testing, nuclear
weapons have produced many radiation victims in different parts of the
world, who are compelled to face nuclear terror in their living even today.
We call on the NGOs to urge the United Nations to conduct
investigation into actual conditions of all nuclear victims and make public
its result. We also call on the UN and NGOs to bring the case of
nuclear victims to the UN Human Rights Commission as the violation of human
rights of the victims, and urge the states concerned to take relief measures
for them.
3. We highly value the 1996 advisory opinion of the International
Court of Justice that stated, "the threat or use of nuclear weapons would
generally be contrary to the rules of international law". However,
it is nothing but the guse of nuclear weapons in an extreme circumstance
c in which the very survival of a state would be at stakeh, on which
the ICJ could not make definitive conclusion on its illegality, that will
inevitably lead to devastating nuclear exchange. We request that
the NGO Millennium Forum take a position that will regard unconditionally
the threat or use of nuclear weapons as violation of international law.