ATOM Project Amb. Karipbek Kuyukov Comments on Japan Bombings Anniversaries

August 5, 2013

Message from The ATOM Project Ambassador Karipbek Kuyukov on the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings

Today, we note the positive role the international antinuclear movement The ATOM Project has played in helping the international community understand the need to fight the nuclear weapons threat and how that threat continues to hang over all the people of our planet.

For many years, the truth of the dangers of nuclear weapons was classified, despite the fact that for many decades thousands of people who received high doses of radiation as a result of nuclear weapons explosions suffered and died from incurable diseases or became mentally or physically disabled. The lingering negative effects of nuclear weapons require thousands and thousands of years to decompose, contaminating soil, air and water. While one of the world’s largest nuclear weapons testing sites, Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan, has been shut down, the international community has yet to fully embrace a global and permanent end to nuclear weapons testing and other test sites are basically dormant. And new countries appeared who are seeking to acquire their own nuclear arsenals.

New global and regional security threats have emerged in our modern, interdependent world, but the possibility of mass destruction as a result of the use of nuclear weapons or a small-scale nuclear dirty bomb remains humanity’s most serious threat. The consequences could be catastrophic if an international terrorist group is able to acquire even a small-scale nuclear device.

Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear weapons activists, supported and led by Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev, are doing everything they can to stop the arms race, the consequences of which are difficult to imagine. The tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will remain forever in our memories. One would hope that after witnessing the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, humanity would never again use nuclear weapons. It is essential that every person on the planet recognizes their responsibility to preserve life and sustain development without endangering future generations through the threat of nuclear weapons. The peoples of the world and heads of state must always remember what horrific consequences the unbridled nuclear power may wreak.