Sharjah24 - AFP: The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to Japan's Nihon Hidankyo, a grassroots movement of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors pushing for a nuclear weapons ban, as states like Russia threaten to use them.
The group, also known as Hibakusha and 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.
Nihon Hidankyo's co-head expressed surprise.
"Never did I dream this could happen," Toshiyuki Mimaki told reporters in Tokyo with tears in his eyes.
"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 international "nuclear taboo" that developed in response to the atomic bomb attacks of August 1945 was "under pressure".
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