6 August 2018

Today marks the 73rd anniversary of the nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, on 9 August, the city of Nagasaki was bombed.

To mark this anniversary, Jean Lambert, London’s Green MEP, said:

“This week, we remember the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was 73 years ago – within living memory – that 129,000 people were killed and entire cities razed to the ground by these needlessly destructive weapons.

We should have learnt our lesson. Instead, some fifty years after countries first signed the UN Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, there remain nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons scattered across our planet.

We have every reason to fear these weapons. This year we’ve witnessed infantile and trigger-happy world leaders play chicken with their nuclear arsenals. President Trump is planning to build more ‘usable’ warheads, and make them easier to deploy.

According to experts, the use of a nuclear weapon is now more likely than any time since the Cold War.

Thankfully it’s not too late to make our planet a safer place. Last July the UN General Assembly adopted an historic treaty seeking to ban nuclear weapons – backed by the majority of the world’s nations. To its shame, the UK Government boycotted this process. [1] [2]

On this important anniversary, I’m calling on ministers to open their eyes to the very real dangers posed by nuclear weapons. It’s time to get off the side-lines and join the Greens on the right side of history. If not, our planet will pay the price.”

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Notes

[1] The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 7 July 2017. See
https://www.un.org/disarmament/tpnw/index.html.

[2] 122 countries voted for the treaty. The UK decided not take part in the process. You can see how countries voted at https://s3.amazonaws.com/unoda-web/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/A.Conf_.229.2017.L.3.Rev_.1.pdf.