Japan group of atomic bomb survivors gets Nobel Peace Prize
A JAPANESE grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2024.
The organisation, Nihon Hidankyo, receives the prize “for its efforts to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons and for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again,” the Oslo-based Norwegian Nobel Committee said in a statement on Friday (Oct 11).
The organisation will receive a US$1.1 million award.
The head of Nihon Hidankyo said on Friday that the group’s win of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize would give a major boost to its efforts to demonstrate that the abolition of nuclear weapons was possible.
“It would be a great force to appeal to the world that the abolition of nuclear weapons can be achieved,” Nihon Hidankyo head Toshiyuki Mimaki told a news conference in Hiroshima, site of the Aug 6, 1945 atomic bombing during World War Two.
“Nuclear weapons should absolutely be abolished,” he said.
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The committee received 286 nominations for this year’s prize, out of which 197 were individuals and the rest organisations. Their names are kept secret for 50 years.
Last year’s laureate is jailed Iranian human-rights activist Narges Mohammadi, who has fought against the oppression of women in Iran. In recent years, other human-rights advocates to be acclaimed with a Nobel include Ales Bialiatski from Belarus, the Russian organisation Memorial and the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties, as well as Liu Xiaobo from China.
The Red Cross has been awarded three times, and other previous laureates include Barack Obama, Martin Luther King and the European Union.
Annual prizes for achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, peace and literature were established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite, who died in 1896. The prize in economic sciences was added by Sweden’s central bank in 1968. BLOOMBERG, REUTERS
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