13 million sign petition urging all nations to ban nuclear weapons : The Asahi Shimbun

Authored by asahi.com and submitted by Hoosier_Jedi
image for 13 million sign petition urging all nations to ban nuclear weapons : The Asahi Shimbun

The Appeal of the Hibakusha association holds an online news conference on Jan. 13. (Ryo Sasaki)

A petition by an organization of survivors of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki urging all nations to sign the U.N. treaty banning nuclear weapons has garnered a whopping 13.7 million signatures.

The Appeal of the Hibakusha association made the announcement during an online news conference on Jan. 13 after submitting the petition to the United Nations on Jan. 8.

The treaty goes into effect on Jan. 22.

The association collected the signatures on the streets, internet and elsewhere before finishing the effort at the end of December.

A total of 1,497 incumbent and former prefectural governors and mayors in Japan added their names to the petition. The petition also drew support from numerous people in countries other than Japan.

The campaign association, comprised of members of Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations) and other organizations, began their activities to achieve a nuclear-free world “while we still live” in April 2016.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted in July 2017. Since then, the campaign has been asking all nations to join the treaty and advocating for it to take effect as early as possible.

The campaign to collect signatures was initially to end by September 2020, but was extended after it appeared that the treaty was likely to go into effect in the near future.

The association collected more than 1 million signatures over the additional three months, mainly online.

PM__ME___Steam__KEYS on January 14th, 2021 at 14:04 UTC »

No country is going to give up it's nukes. Gaddafi gave up WMD and look at what happened to him.

Russia/US will never ever give up it's nukes no matter what. The only thing stopping an all out war between India/Pak/China are their nukes. Israel says it doesn't have nukes but they most certainly do and will never give up due to their neighbours. The only reason anyone even listens to NK is due to their nukes. Well France and UK are the only countries who aren't really pointing their nukes at someone but why would they go first?

SkyAdministrative970 on January 14th, 2021 at 12:57 UTC »

How the us, russia and china are going to respond to this. "Ok, you first"

Admitone83 on January 14th, 2021 at 11:34 UTC »

...and in the bin it went.