Nobel for nuke activists

Efforts to achieve world free of nuclear arms are recognised.

- 

The Nobel Peace Prize was yesterday awarded to the Japanese anti-nuclear group Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of atomic bomb survivors from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, also known as Hibakusha.

The group, founded in 1956, received the honour "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," said Jorgen Watne Frydnes, the chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

Co-head of the group expressed surprise at winning the award.

"Never did I dream this could happen," Toshiyuki Mimaki said.

"It has been said that because of nuclear weapons, the world maintains peace," he said.

But "if Russia uses them against Ukraine, Israel against Gaza, it won't end there," he warned. "Politicians should know these things."

The Nobel committee expressed alarm that the “nuclear taboo" that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was "under pressure".