Nuclear weapons contradict every principle of humanitarian law (Judge Weeramantry)

Editor's Note: I recently attended the Peace and Planet Conference in New York, held just prior to the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference.  At its first plenary, Jackie Cabasso, director of Western States Legal Foundation, read the following message on the illegality of nuclear weapons from Judge Christopher Weeramantry. Judge Weeramantry was one of the 15 judges on the International Court of Justice that rendered the famous advisory opinion on the Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons in 1996.

The Total Illegality of Nuclear Weapons

and

The Imperative Need for Their Abolition

 

24 April 2015

 

Judge Christopher Weeramantry

Former Vice-President, International Court of Justice

Co-President, International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms

Weeramantry International Center for Peace Education and Research

Colombo, Sri Lanka

 

It gives much pleasure to send a message to the Peace and Planet Conference, held by civil society on the eve of the 2015 NPT Review Conference.

Never since the human race evolved has it faced a danger so devastating to all its past achievements and so destructive of its future expectations as it faces today. Thousands of weapons are today assembled in the arsenals of the world, each of which, even by itself, is fraught with greater peril to all humanity and to future generations then all the brutality of all the weapons cumulatively used in the wars of past centuries. The cruelty of all the tyrants of the past pales into insignificance in comparison with the proven cruelty of the nuclear weapon.

Yet, the legal professions of the world, the governments of the world, the religious assemblies of the world, the educational systems of the world and the general public of the world, who should be crying out from the rooftops for the immediate abolition of the weapon, are not even heard in the corridors of power.

It is amazing that this danger should have continued not merely to exist but also to expand in intensity through nearly three generations after the brutality of the weapon was demonstrated to all the world through its use in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We, who should now be at the very apex of human civilization, seem on the contrary to be ready at a moment’s notice to plunge all humanity into the very depths of brutality.

This is what the nuclear weapon means to every citizen on planet earth and every citizen who will inhabit the planet for a thousand generations to come. Future generations, whose inherent rights to health and a pure environment are being trampled under-foot by our generation, would raise their hands in disbelief that a weapon of such known brutality should have been permitted to remain on the planet. They would be even more shocked to know that these weapons were permitted to increase in intensity through three generations, and even more surprisingly through three generations during which human rights and the rights of future generations have been the subject of much attention.

The next time a nuclear weapon is used it will not be on a helpless target, with no possibility of retaliation. In a world of multiple conflicts, of proliferation of nuclear weapons, of
burgeoning terrorist movements, of spreading knowledge regarding their manufacture, of easy availability of raw materials and of a plenitude of funds for this purpose, the need for control and elimination of nuclear weapons is a thousand times greater than it was in the days of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Moreover, when the weapons start flying in both directions, all scientific studies make it patently clear that a nuclear winter will result, blotting out sunlight from large sections of the planet, devastating crops, depriving all humanity of food and reducing human life to the darkness of the Stone Age.

It is remarkable also that world religions and systems of humanitarian thought for thousands of years have condemned the use of hyper-destructive weapons. For example Hinduism, over three thousand years ago, condemned the use of a hyper-destructive weapon which was said to have the potential to ravage the enemy’s countryside and decimate its population. The Lateran Council in the twelfth century condemned the use of even the crossbow as being too cruel to be used in warfare. Islamic law condemned even the use of a poisoned arrow.

Humanitarian law has for centuries condemned the use of weapons that cause unnecessary suffering. Yet, strangely enough, the nuclear weapon defies all these prohibitions and hangs like the sword of Damocles over the entire human race. The Dum-dum bullet which explodes on entering the victim’s body was condemned in the 19 century as too cruel to be used amongst civilized nations, yet strangely enough the nuclear weapon persists.

The weapon contradicts every principle of humanitarian law, every principle of international law and every principle of religious teaching. Either its days are numbered or the days of human civilisation are numbered.

It is for us to make the choice.

Arresting the Wrong Suspects

Contributed by John LaForge

NEW YORK, NY – Here at the United Nations, talk is focused on the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (N-P.T.). At about 11 a.m. Apr. 28, I was handcuffed with 21 other nuclear realists after blocking an entrance to the US Mission. I say “realists” because US media won’t pay much attention to US violations of nuclear weapons treaties unless somebody is taken off to jail.
Barrels of ink are used detailing Iran’s non-existent nuclear arsenal. The US has about 2,000 nuclear weapons ready to launch and used as ticking time bombs every day by presidents — the way gunslingers can get the dough without ever pulling the trigger. Deterrence it is not.

(l to R) Carol Gilbert, John LaForge and Ardeth Platte showing the 450 U.S.
land-based missiles that hold the world under the threat of nuclear omnicide.

When we were ordered to leave or face arrest, we called ourselves crime-stoppers and asked the officers to arrest the real scofflaws. We were packed into vans and driven to the 17th Precinct. Our band of nuclear abolitionists concluded long ago that US nuclear banditry and pollutionism was worth dramatizing for a day, or a month, or a lifetime.

We talked while the cops worked through the booking routine. David McReynolds, 85, the long-time staff member of War Resisters League (Ret.), asked us all to watch when he exited the van to see that he didn’t lose his balance. I wondered if I’d have the guts to keep doing these actions if I get to the wobbly decades.

The day before, Sec. of State John Kerry double-spoke to the Gen. Assembly, promising both to continue with US nuclear posturing and to dream of a nuclear-free world. I skipped his puffery and went to hear Jay Coghlan of Nuclear Watch New Mexico explain the US government’s plans for three new H-bomb factories (one each in Tenn., Kansas and New Mexico), and plans for building 80 new plutonium warheads every year until 2027. In 1996, the World Court declared the N-P.T.’s pledge to eliminate nuclear weapons to be a binding, unequivocal and unambiguous legal obligation. Our arrest citation is ironic because it’s the US that has “refused a lawful order.”

Back in the police truck, time dragged. Somebody said we should share a few political jokes. Q: “Why are statistics just like prison inmates?” A: “If you torture them enough, they’ll tell you anything you want to hear.” Bad prison puns are easy to come by among political dissidents.

Finally inside the precinct, I sat in the holding cell next to Jerry Goralnick, a playwright with The Living Theatre, who is trying to get a script staged involving the jail-house relationship between Dorothy Day and a colleague who shared a cell for 90 days. Day, a founder of the Catholic Worker movement, and her friend were jailed in New York City for refusing to obey civil defense officers and go down into fallout shelters. It was during the delusional era of “winnable” nuclear war. Their defiance was a simple case of refusing to lie about nuclear weapons. They were realists who knew that the 10-square-mile firestorms ignited by H-bombs suck all the air out of fallout shelters where the huddled then suffocate. They knew there is no defense under such nuclear conflagration, that survivors would envy the dead.

These days, nuclear war planning goes on 6 stories below Strategic Command HQ at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha. Deep in Strat-Com’s sub-basements, technicians with the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff select people and places to be incinerated if need be. The targets are lands belonging to US trading partners, allies and friends that have the Bomb — China, Russia, India, Pakistan — and non-nuclear countries like Iran and North Korea (which may have 3 nukes but have no way to deliver them).

This target planning has been going on for decades. A few thousand hard-bitten, nuclear-obsessed optimists have been crying “foul” about it the whole while. I was in custody with 21 of them for a few hours. It was a relief to be there.

Our complaint, which should be on display at the June 24 court arraignment, is that nuclear weapons producers, deployers and trigger men in the US (the ones we’re responsible for), are criminal gangsters, dangerous sociopaths, members of a global terror cell making non-stop bomb threats that they disguise with a theatrical hoax called “deterrence.”

I’ve seen this legal argument succeed in court only twice, but those two not-guilty verdicts convince me that the law is on our side. Dum-dum bullets, nerve gas, landmines, cluster bombs, chemical agents, biological weapons and poison are all illegal — banned by Treaties. Nuclear warheads do all the harm of these outlawed weapons combined — plus mutagenic and teratogenic damage to multiple generations. Our State Department man says the Bomb is unfortunate and legal — but the Secretary Has No Clothes.

The Isaiah Wall, across the street from the UN, during the vigil prior to the
nonviolent blockade of the U.S. Mission to the UN

While UN member states argue over whether the possession of H-bombs violates the N-P.T., I’ll stay with the realists just out of handcuffs — at least until the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff and Mr. Kerry are charged with disturbing the peace.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
— John LaForge works for Nukewatch, a nuclear watchdog group in Wisconsin, edits its Quarterly newsletter, and is syndicated through PeaceVoice.

- Photos in this post by Leonard Eiger

Gensuikyo Calls for a Total Ban on Nuclear Weapons

Dear friends, Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo) issued the following "Letter to the Heads of the Five Nuclear Weapon States," when the second PrepCom of the NPT is just around the corner. The letter was addressed to US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin, French President Francois Hollande, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese President Xi Jinping. We visited the embassies of P5 in Tokyo on April 5, 8 and 9, 2013 and handed it over to them. The copy of the letter was also sent to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on April 10. We sent the letter in the hope that P5 will take initiatives to achieve an agreement for a total ban on nuclear weapons at the forthcoming Second NPT PrepCom or at the sessions of the UNGA and the UN Security Council, so that the 2015 NPT Review Conference will become a place to launch actions for definitely attaining the “peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

 :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

Letter to the Heads of the Five Nuclear Weapon States

Decision and Action Now for a Total Ban on Nuclear Weapons

April 2013 

Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs 

It will soon be the 68th summer since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were obliterated by two atomic bombs.

With call of the survivors who witnessed the “nuclear hell” for “No more Hiroshimas, No more Nagasakis, No more Hibakusha” and mounting public support for them, a historic momentum is building up to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The NPT Review Conference of May 2010 agreed to “achieve the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” and declared, “all States need to make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.”

gensuikWith the 2015 NPT Review Conference approaching, the governments and civil society must take actions in unison to bring this goal to a reality. So far, although three years have elapsed since then, the path to reach this goal is not yet in sight. True, a certain number of nuclear weapons, including those dealt between the U.S. and Russia, were cut down, but still some 19,000 nuclear warheads are stockpiled or deployed. Even such moves as acquiring nuclear weapons are continuing, as seen in the current tension on the Korean Peninsula. Whether intentional or accidental, the danger of nuclear weapons actually being used remains real.  

Why does such a situation continue? It is because of the lack of an agreement for a total ban on nuclear weapons in international politics. The use of nuclear weapons is a crime against humanity, threatening the survival of the human community and civilization. It is “contrary to the rule of international law …, and in particular the principles and rules of humanitarian law,” as declared by the International Court of Justice. History tells us that the claim of the nuclear powers that their nuclear weapons are for deterrence to guarantee security is “contagious." It pushes the threatened side to seek the same “guarantee of security.”

In order to eliminate nuclear weapons, the only way is to totally prohibit them. The United Nations is called on to unanimously confirm this and take actions to achieve a nuclear weapons convention (NWC). The Security Council, especially its five permanent members, which are the nuclear weapon states, bears special responsibility to exert leadership to this end. They must recall the fact that the Security Council Summit held in September 2009 agreed to “create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons” and confirmed the obligation to pursue negotiations for nuclear disarmament mandated by Article 6 of the NPT.

The conditions for totally banning nuclear weapons are ripe:
    -- At the General Assembly of the United Nations, the resolutions calling for nuclear weapons abolition all command overwhelming majority support. At its 67th session, the proposer of the New Agenda Coalition resolution, which was supported by 175 member states, emphasized the need to set "timelines” and a “legally-binding framework” for this.
    -- The statement warning of the inhumanity of nuclear weapons use and calling for efforts to outlaw them is supported worldwide. In addition, many countries are taking part in work for consultation and negotiations, including one leading to nuclear weapons abolition.
    -- Of the 190 States parties to the NPT, 185 states have undertaken the obligations of Article 2 as the “non-nuclear weapon states,” renouncing the acquisition, development or possession of nuclear weapons. -- India and Pakistan, which are non-parties to the NPT, and North Korea, which has declared to withdraw from the NPT, voted in favor of the UN resolution (A/C. 1/67/L9) calling for a start of negotiations leading to a nuclear weapons convention.

These facts prove that if the five nuclear weapon states make a decision, the U.N. Security Council or General Assembly can confirm in consensus the need to totally ban nuclear weapons. Based on that, negotiations for a NWC can be launched.

We must point out that any further delay in this decision and actions is tantamount to neglecting the danger of causing a second or third Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

In August 2010, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, as the first U.N. Secretary-General to visit Hiroshima, renewed his determination to achieve a “world without nuclear weapons.” In support of the proposal by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki calling for the “abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020,” he invited the world to join together with the Hibakusha on the 75th anniversary of the bombing to celebrate the end of nuclear weapons.

After two more annual Preparatory Committee meetings, the next NPT Review Conference will be held in 2015. The focal point of the Conference will be how much the agreement of achieving “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” placed in the first line of the “Principles and Objectives” of the 2010 Review Conference document, will have been achieved. The determination and effort to that end by the five nuclear weapon states would also promote the implementation of the specific agreements, including the ratification and entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the start of negotiations for a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty and the convening of an international conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction, and help eradicate the danger of nuclear proliferation.

For the reasons above, we sincerely appeal that you take initiatives to achieve an agreement for a total ban on nuclear weapons at the forthcoming Second PrepCom of the NPT and the sessions of the U.N. General Assembly in autumn and in the Security Council, so that the 2015 NPT Review Conference will become a place to launch actions for definitely attaining the “peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”

 CC: Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations =============================================
Japan Council against A & H Bombs (GENSUIKYO)
2-4-4 Yushima, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8464 JAPAN
phone: +81-3-5842-6034
fax: +81-3-5842-6033
Email: antiatom@topaz.plala.or.jp  
URL: http://www.antiatom.org/

A Hibakusha asks, "Who will continue the struggle..."

Friends,

Ai Satoh of the Japan Council against A & H Bombs (Gensuikyo) shared the following speech given by Ms. Setsuko Thurlow, a Hibakusha of Hiroshima, to the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly just the other day.  Like so many other Hibakusha, Setsuko has dedicated herself to sharing the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and preventing future nuclear war. 

It is right that Setsuko spoke at the United Nations, an organization brought forth "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."  Of course, nuclear war would be a scourge unlike anything humankind has ever known, and the nations that have "united" to "live together in peace" must work with a will to abolish nuclear weapons.

Setsuko Thurlow, Hibakusha of Hiroshima

It is unconsionable that one nation would withold its financial debt to this family of nations to which it belongs, no matter how imperfect the U.N. might be.  Rather than trying to tear it down the United States should be working to build it up, and updholding all its obligations both those of a financial nature as well as legal ones.

The duty, under international humanitarian law, to bring an end to the threat of nuclear weapons is clear.  Of all the voices that speak, only those of the Hibakusha speak from the direct experience of nuclear horror, a horror that if ever unleashed again will make the horrific experiences of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pale in comparison. 

For the 18th consecutive year, the General Assembly's First Committee passed a resolution on October 26th calling for the eradication of nuclear arms.  Japan submitted the resolution, which had broad support.  A plenary session of the General Assembly is expected to vote on the resolution this December.

May we hear the message of the Hibakusha, and may we support the efforts of the United Nations to abolish nuclear weapons once and for all.  May we stimulate younger generations to (in Setsuko's words) "continue the struggle to outlaw and eliminate the last remaining weapon of mass destruction: nuclear weapons."

Peace,

Leonard

****************

United Nations General Assembly First Committee
October 26, 2011
Ms. Setsuko Thurlow

Dear Members of the First Committee and guests,

I am privileged to have this opportunity to share with you a small part of my experience of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

On August 6, 1945, as a 13 year-old grade 8 student in the Student Mobilization Program I was with about 30 other girls working at the Army headquarters as a decoding assistant. The building was 1.8 km from the hypo-centre. At 8:15 a.m., the moment I saw a brilliant bluish-white flash outside the window, I remember having the sensation of floating in the air. As I regained consciousness in the silence and the darkness, I found myself pinned by the ruins of the collapsed building. I could not move, and I knew I was faced with death. I began to hear my classmates’ faint cries, “Mother, help me” “God, help me”. Then, suddenly, I felt hands touching my left shoulder, and heard a man’s voice saying, “Don’t give up! Keep moving! I am trying to free you. See the light coming through that opening. Crawl towards it and get out as quickly as possible.” As I came out, the ruins were already on fire. Most of my classmates who were with me in the same room were burned alive. A soldier ordered me and two other surviving girls to escape to the nearby hills.

I looked around. Although it was morning, it was dark as twilight, with dust and smoke rising in the air. I saw streams of ghostly figures, slowly shuffling from the centre of the city towards the nearby hills. They were naked and tattered, bleeding, burned, blackened and swollen. Parts of their bodies were missing, flesh and skin hanging from their bones, some with their eyeballs hanging in their hands, and some with their stomachs burst open, with intestines hanging out. We girls joined the ghostly procession, carefully stepping over the dead and dying. There was a deathly silence broken only by the moans of the injured and their pleas for water. The foul stench of burned skin filled the air.

At the foot of the hill was an army training ground, about the size of two football fields. It was covered with the dead and injured, who were desperately begging, often in faint whispers, “Water, water, please give me water.” But we had no containers to carry any water. We went to a nearby stream to wash off the blood and dirt from our bodies. Then we tore off our blouses, soaked them with water, and hurried back to hold them to the mouths of the injured, who desperately sucked in the moisture. We kept busy at this task all day. We did not see any doctors or nurses. When darkness fell, we sat on the hillside and all night watched the entire city burn, numbed by the massive and grotesque scale of death and suffering we had witnessed.

Thus, my beloved city of Hiroshima suddenly became desolation, with heaps of ash and rubble, skeletons and blackened corpses. Its population of 360,000, most of whom were non-combatant women, children, and elderly, became victims of the indiscriminate massacre of the atomic bombing. By the end of 1945 approximately 140,000 had perished. As of the present day, at least 260,000 have perished because of the effects of the blast, heat, and radiation. My own age group of over 8,000 grade 7 and 8 students from all the high schools in the city were engaged in clearing fire lanes in the centre of the city. Many of them were killed instantly by the heat of 4,000 degrees Celsius. Radiation, the unique characteristic of the atomic bombing, affected people in mysterious and random ways, with some dying immediately, and others weeks, months, or years later by the delayed effects, and radiation is still killing survivors today, 66 years later.

I am incapable of describing fully the extent of human suffering caused by this unprecedented catastrophe, from the loss of human lives, shelter, food and medical care to the rapidly spreading rumours and discrimination against the “exposed ones” and “contaminated ones”. In addition people suffered from psycho-social trauma caused by the sudden collapse of their belief system, with Japan’s surrender in the war, and by the oppressive control imposed on them by the Occupation Forces, in the form of censorship and the confiscation of evidential materials of human suffering to be kept secret from public view.

With the end of the occupation the flood of information suddenly became available, enabling the survivors to contemplate the meaning of our survival in historical perspective and global context. We became convinced that no human being should ever have to repeat our experience of inhumanity, illegality, immorality and cruelty of an atomic bombing, and that our mission was to warn the world about the threat of this ultimate evil. We believe that humanity and nuclear weapons cannot coexist, and for the past several decades we have been speaking out around the world for the total abolition of nuclear weapons, as the only path to security and the preservation of the human community and civilization for future generations.

But has the world heard our plea? Has it listened to the cries of billions from around the world who desire peace not war, life not death? Is it justifiable for nuclear weapon states to possess and keep modernizing their nuclear weapons while keeping the world hostage in fear, not making efforts to fulfill in good faith their obligation under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and promoting the trade in nuclear materials with the state who refuses membership in the NPT? It was empowering to hear President Obama’s acknowledgement in Prague in 2009 of the US moral responsibility to work for nuclear disarmament, as the only nation that actually used nuclear weapons. Japanese Prime Ministers have repeatedly stated that Japan, as the only nation victimized by nuclear weapons, should be at the forefront of the global campaign for the abolition of nuclear weapons. I urge Japan and the United States to provide the initiative and enlightened leadership for the world’s most urgent and needed movement. Is this a fool’s dream? Still, I respectfully offer this proposal on behalf of all the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, and elsewhere.

With the horrific earthquake, tsunami, and the nuclear power facility accident in Japan earlier this year there was an incredible outpouring of sympathy and support from around the world. It was a painful reminder to the world that within our life times we were witnessing once again people being exposed to radiation, this time through the force of nature combined with the fallibility of human ingenuity. Japanese people have gained a heightened awareness of the risk involved in nuclear power generation, and of how their government rushed to build 54 nuclear power facilities in the past several decades while avoiding public debate on this issue.

As Douglas Roche, Canada’s former Ambassador for Disarmament to the UN and the former international chairman of the Middle Power Initiative, has warned, use of the fissile materials in nuclear reactions – enriched uranium and plutonium – is spreading. “The same reactors that produce energy for peaceful purposes can also be used to turn out nuclear bombs. Will the expansion of nuclear energy in the world lead to the spread of nuclear weapons and increased dangers of nuclear terrorism?”

The NPT guarantees the so-called “inalienable right” of states to access nuclear energy in exchange for agreeing never to acquire nuclear weapons. Thus hibakusha, survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who witnessed the atrocity of the first two uses of nuclear weapons 66 years ago, now confront the horror that sufficient nuclear fuel exists in dozens of countries to make another 120,000 nuclear bombs. Has not the time come to consider replacing the pillar of the NPT guaranteeing access to nuclear energy technology with a guarantee for access and technological assistance for renewable energy from the sun, wind, and tides?

At a quickening pace the Hiroshima and Nagasaki hibakusha are dying, filled with foreboding alarm and horror that their dream of a nuclear free world has not yet been achieved. The world community has outlawed biological and chemical warfare. Who will continue the struggle to outlaw and eliminate the last remaining weapon of mass destruction: nuclear weapons? You and I, together, we can. We must.