MEDIA RELEASE, 11 March 2016, ACDN

The Japanese people, who commemorated last August the 70th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is today commemorating for the 5th time the 2011 drama of earthquake and tsunami, and with it the start of the ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima which continues to contaminate the planet.

Japan’s people have paid a heavy price for nuclear technology in its two forms, military and civilian. The majority of them have drawn lessons from it, first by opposing nuclear weapons and now by refusing to allow the nuclear reactors to start up again.

But in Japan as in France, the current governments are deciding to ignore history. They want to prolong the life of an industry that carries death and nears its own death. At the same time they are preparing people’s minds, and the administration, army and police, for a future catastrophe for which they will be accountable.

That is the avowed objective of the constitutional bill on the state of emergency. (1)

The governments would do better to listen to leaders who were confronted with such catastrophes, notably Mikhail Gorbachev with Chernobyl and the Japanese PM at the time of the Fukushima events in 2011, Naoto Kan. Mr Kan was pro-nuclear before the catastrophe. Now he is travelling the world calling for the closure of all nuclear power-plants, in Japan, in France, every one without exception.

The threat posed by nuclear technology, both military and civilian, is hanging over the whole earth. If the planet is to survive, it must get rid of all these weapons and power-plants as soon as possible.

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(1) See "State of Emergency, « Public Calamities », Nuclear Accidents: A French "Patriot Act" Targeting the Anti-nuclear People"