Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: death

  • Who Will Assist the Victims of Nuclear Weapons?

    On 30 August 1945 Dr Marcel Junod, the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Japan, received a chilling cable from an ICRC representative in Hiroshima. The cable read as follows: “Conditions appalling. City wiped out. Eighty percent of all hospitals destroyed or seriously damaged. Inspected two emergency hospitals, conditions beyond description. Effect of bomb mysteriously serious. Many victims apparently recovering suddenly suffer fatal relapse due to decomposition of white blood cells and other internal injuries, now dying in great numbers. Estimated still over one hundred thousand wounded in emergency hospitals located surroundings. Sadly lacking bandaging materials, medicines.”

    On his arrival in Hiroshima, Marcel Junod came face-to-face with the grim reality of medical care after an atomic bombing of a city and its medical infrastructure. In addition to the destruction and damage to hospitals mentioned in the cable, the impact on those meant to care for the sick and wounded was equally severe: 90% of Hiroshima’s doctors were killed or injured by the explosion, as were 92% of the city’s nurses and 80% of its pharmacists. There was a desperate need for blood but no possibility of blood transfusions as most potential donors were either dead or injured. To put it bluntly, the city’s capacity to treat victims had been wiped out. As a result, there was little or no health-care provision in the immediate aftermath of the explosion.

    This same catastrophic scenario – and more – awaits us if nuclear weapons are ever used again. While the destructive capacity of nuclear weapons increased dramatically during the Cold War, the capacity of States and international agencies to assist the victims did not. As you will hear tomorrow, the ICRC has over the past six years made an in-depth assessment of its own capacity, and that of other agencies, to help the victims of nuclear, radiological, biological and chemical weapons. We have concluded that an effective means of assisting a substantial portion of survivors of a nuclear detonation, while adequately protecting those delivering assistance, is not currently available at national level and not feasible at international level. It is highly unlikely that the immense investment required to develop such capacity will ever be made. If made, it would likely remain insufficient.

    In April 2010, my predecessor, Jakob Kellenberger, spoke of this state of affairs in a statement to Geneva’s diplomatic community. In this statement the ICRC made four key points:

    • Nuclear weapons are unique in their destructive power, in the unspeakable human suffering they cause, in the impossibility of controlling their effects in space and time, in the risks of escalation they create, and in the threat they pose to the environment, to future generations, and indeed to the survival of humanity.
    • It is difficult to envisage how any use of nuclear weapons could be compatible with the rules of international humanitarian law.
    • Regardless of their views on the legality of nuclear weapons, States must ensure that they are never again used.
    • Preventing the use of nuclear weapons requires fulfilment of existing obligations to pursue negotiations aimed at prohibiting and completely eliminating such weapons through a legally binding international treaty.

    We are encouraged by the response to the ICRC’s appeal in 2010. Since then, the 190 States party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons have recognized the “catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons” and the relevance of international humanitarian law in this regard. Those States have also reaffirmed the call made by the United Nations Security Council at its summit in 2009, and by Presidents Obama and Medvedev earlier that year, to move towards a world free of nuclear weapons. In 2011 the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement made a historic appeal on nuclear weapons, in the same vein as that of the ICRC. In it, the Movement undertook to raise awareness among the public, scientists, health professionals and decision-makers of its ongoing concerns and to promote the norm of non-use and the elimination of nuclear weapons among governments and the public. In October 2012 the Movement’s concerns were reflected in a statement made by 34 States to the UN General Assembly’s First Committee.

    The ICRC warmly welcomes the Norwegian Government’s initiative to convene this conference on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons. Although nuclear weapons have been debated in military, technical and geopolitical terms for decades, it is astounding that States have never before come together to address their humanitarian consequences.

    In our view, no informed political or legal position on these weapons can be adopted without a detailed grasp of the immediate consequences of these weapons on human beings and on medical and other infrastructure. It is also essential to understand the long-term effects on human health and on the genetics of survivors; consequences that have been confirmed by research and have been witnessed and treated for nearly seven decades by the Japanese Red Cross hospitals in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In addition, one cannot ignore the insight offered by modern climate science into the implications of nuclear weapon use for the world’s climate and food production. And last, but by no means least, States must answer the question: Who will assist the victims of these weapons and how? The next two days provide a unique and historic opportunity to begin addressing these fundamental issues.

    In closing, I am confident that, as you broach these issues, you will share the ICRC’s commitment to prevent any future use of nuclear weapons. I also hope that you will be driven by the sense of opportunity generated by this conference and by the belief that the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons must be at the centre of the debate. This is an important moment to recognize and understand these consequences, thus ensuring that they are central to future discussions.

    And yet, an awareness of the consequences of nuclear weapons will not be enough to definitively prevent the use of and bring about the elimination of nuclear weapons. Public awareness, media interest and the sustained commitment of responsible State authorities are crucial. The international community has not always seized upon opportunities to prevent human suffering. In the case of nuclear weapons, prevention – including the development of a legally binding treaty to prohibit and eliminate such weapons – is the only way forward.

    Peter Maurer is President of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

  • Fable of the Emperor and the Grieving Mother

    Once upon a time there was an Emperor who thought that the war he had started was exciting, albeit troublesome. He thought that running a war was “hard work,” and thinking always made him tired. So, he decided to take another vacation and visit his castle in the provinces, where he could relax with his vassals and nobles seeking his favor and not have to think.

    Nearly all of the vassals and nobles, like the Emperor himself, liked war very much, although they didn’t like to personally participate. Many had cleverly avoided their own involvement in wars when they were young. For instance, the Emperor’s chief vassal, Sir Dick, loved war nearly as much as life itself, but had been a champion at getting deferments from participating in war as a young man. In this way, he could live to grow old and send new generations of young people to war.

    A problem arose in the Emperor’s realm when a grieving woman whose son had died in the Emperor’s war decided to visit the Emperor and ask him what purpose her son’s death had served. She traveled to the Emperor’s castle in the provinces where he was relaxing from the “hard work” of war. She sent a message to him, which said, “I have lost a son who was most precious to me and I wish to know from you that his death was not in vain, that he died for some greater purpose. Please come out from behind the walls of your castle and let me know how my son’s death has been for a noble cause.”

    One of the Emperor’s vassals approached him, and told the Emperor that he had a message from a grieving mother of one of the Emperor’s fallen soldiers. After reading the message, the Emperor turned to the vassal and asked, “Why do you bother me with this, the words of a simple woman, when I have an empire to run and am relaxing from the hard work of war? As you know, tonight we have more riches to gather, and I must be in a mood for gaiety.”

    The vassal bowed low and backed away, apologizing, “I’m sorry,” he said, “I thought that her encampment before the castle might stir up trouble among the people of the realm.”

    “Leave me,” said the Emperor imperiously, “My loyal subjects know better than to speak ill of me.” The Emperor was supremely confident in the knowledge that his subjects, and especially the scribes, would not speak ill of him.

    But the woman’s message had put the Emperor in a bad mood. He thought it impertinent of this woman to send such a message. He had an empire to run, and no time for explaining to a grieving mother why her son had died. It should be obvious to her that her son died because that’s what soldiers do. They die in battle. If they cannot avoid the military, like Sir Dick had done, or at least stay out of war as the Emperor himself had done, then they die in battle if they are unlucky and then are replaced by other soldiers.

    The walls of the Emperor’s castle were high, and the Emperor knew he was safe from this grieving mother and her kind behind them. He and Sir Dick knew best what the empire needed, and he knew that now was the time to relax so that after some weeks he could return to the “hard work” of war.

    But while the message of the grieving mother encamped in front of the Emperor’s castle did not move the hard heart of the Emperor, it did indeed miraculously resound through the empire, and the populace did indeed begin to question with her whether her son had died in vain and whether the Emperor’s war had been no more than tragic folly.

    All fables have a moral, and the moral of this one is: If your son or daughter has died in war and you are a grieving mother, know that while your words may not move the Emperor to come out from behind the safety of his castle walls, your pain and courage may still stir a revolt across the empire and save other mothers’ sons and daughters as well as the innocent citizens of far-off lands.

    David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is the author of a recent book of anti-war poetry, Today Is Not a Good Day for War.

  • Occupied Territories: Iraq, America

    It has quickly become clear that Iraq is not a liberated country, but an occupied country. We became familiar with that term during the second world war. We talked of German-occupied France, German-occupied Europe. And after the war we spoke of Soviet-occupied Hungary, Czechoslovakia, eastern Europe. It was the Nazis, the Soviets, who occupied countries. The United States liberated them from occupation.

    Now we are the occupiers. True, we liberated Iraq from Saddam Hussein, but not from us. Just as in 1898 we liberated Cuba from Spain, but not from us. Spanish tyranny was overthrown, but the US established a military base in Cuba, as we are doing in Iraq. US corporations moved into Cuba, just as Bechtel and Halliburton and the oil corporations are moving into Iraq. The US framed and imposed, with support from local accomplices, the constitution that would govern Cuba, just as it has drawn up, with help from local political groups, a constitution for Iraq. Not a liberation. An occupation.

    And it is an ugly occupation. On August 7 2003 the New York Times reported that General Sanchez in Baghdad was worried about the Iraqi reaction to occupation. Pro-US Iraqi leaders were giving him a message, as he put it: “When you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family.” (That’s very perceptive.)

    We know that fighting during the US offensive in November 2004 destroyed three-quarters of the town of Falluja (population 360,000), killing hundreds of its inhabitants. The objective of the operation was to cleanse the town of the terrorist bands acting as part of a “Ba’athist conspiracy”.

    But we should recall that on June 16 2003, barely six weeks after President Bush had claimed victory in Iraq, two reporters for the Knight Ridder newspaper group wrote this about the Falluja area: “In dozens of interviews during the past five days, most residents across the area said there was no Ba’athist or Sunni conspiracy against US soldiers, there were only people ready to fight because their relatives had been hurt or killed, or they themselves had been humiliated by home searches and road stops … One woman said, after her husband was taken from their home because of empty wooden crates which they had bought for firewood, that the US is guilty of terrorism.”

    Soldiers who are set down in a country where they were told they would be welcomed as liberators and find they are surrounded by a hostile population become fearful and trigger-happy. On March 4 nervous, frightened GIs manning a roadblock fired on the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena, just released by kidnappers, and an intelligence service officer, Nicola Calipari, whom they killed.

    We have all read reports of US soldiers angry at being kept in Iraq. Such sentiments are becoming known to the US public, as are the feelings of many deserters who are refusing to return to Iraq after home leave. In May 2003 a Gallup poll reported that only 13% of the US public thought the war was going badly. According to a poll published by the New York Times and CBS News on June 17, 51% now think the US should not have invaded Iraq or become involved in the war. Some 59% disapprove of Bush’s handling of the situation.

    But more ominous, perhaps, than the occupation of Iraq is the occupation of the US. I wake up in the morning, read the newspaper, and feel that we are an occupied country, that some alien group has taken over. I wake up thinking: the US is in the grip of a president surrounded by thugs in suits who care nothing about human life abroad or here, who care nothing about freedom abroad or here, who care nothing about what happens to the earth, the water or the air, or what kind of world will be inherited by our children and grandchildren.

    More Americans are beginning to feel, like the soldiers in Iraq, that something is terribly wrong. More and more every day the lies are being exposed. And then there is the largest lie, that everything the US does is to be pardoned because we are engaged in a “war on terrorism”, ignoring the fact that war is itself terrorism, that barging into homes and taking away people and subjecting them to torture is terrorism, that invading and bombing other countries does not give us more security but less.

    The Bush administration, unable to capture the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks, invaded Afghanistan, killing thousands of people and driving hundreds of thousands from their homes. Yet it still does not know where the criminals are. Not knowing what weapons Saddam Hussein was hiding, it invaded and bombed Iraq in March 2003, disregarding the UN, killing thousands of civilians and soldiers and terrorising the population; and not knowing who was and was not a terrorist, the US government confined hundreds of people in Guantánamo under such conditions that 18 have tried to commit suicide.

    The Amnesty International Report 2005 notes: ” Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times … When the most powerful country in the world thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights, it grants a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity”.

    The “war on terrorism” is not only a war on innocent people in other countries; it is a war on the people of the US: on our liberties, on our standard of living. The country’s wealth is being stolen from the people and handed over to the super-rich. The lives of the young are being stolen.

    The Iraq war will undoubtedly claim many more victims, not only abroad but also on US territory. The Bush administration maintains that, unlike the Vietnam war, this conflict is not causing many casualties. True enough, fewer than 2,000 service men and women have lost their lives in the fighting. But when the war finally ends, the number of its indirect victims, through disease or mental disorders, will increase steadily. After the Vietnam war, veterans reported congenital malformations in their children, caused by Agent Orange.

    Officially there were only a few hundred losses in the Gulf war of 1991, but the US Gulf War Veterans Association has reported 8,000 deaths in the past 10 years. Some 200,000 veterans, out of 600,000 who took part, have registered a range of complaints due to the weapons and munitions used in combat. We have yet to see the long-term effects of depleted uranium on those currently stationed in Iraq.

    Our faith is that human beings only support violence and terror when they have been lied to. And when they learn the truth, as happened in the course of the Vietnam war, they will turn against the government. We have the support of the rest of the world. The US cannot indefinitely ignore the 10 million people who protested around the world on February 15 2003.

    There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.

    Howard Zinn is professor emeritus of political science at Boston University; his books include A People’s History of the United States.

    Originally published by The Guardian.

  • Yet Another Farewell

    Yet Another Farewell

    On the death of the 500th American soldier in Iraq

    Let us lay the heavy black bag at your feet
    While the tired buglers sound their dirge.

    Let us lay the heavy black bag at your feet
    Like a terrible wreath.

    If you nudge the sturdy bag with your right foot
    Nothing will happen.

    If you kick the formless bag with your left foot
    Nothing will happen.

    It will not respond, nor speak nor cry.

    Will you circle the black bag cautiously
    Like a coyote?

    Will you howl, break down in tears
    Or simply smirk?

    David Krieger
    January 2004

     

  • Elisabeth Mann Borgese: First Lady of the Oceans

    Elisabeth Mann Borgese: First Lady of the Oceans

    Humanity and the oceans lost a great friend and champion when Elisabeth Mann Borgese died on February 8th. Elisabeth, the youngest daughter of Thomas Mann, was a true citizen of the world. She inspired me and many others with her vision of the oceans as the “common heritage of humankind” and her ceaseless efforts to make this vision a reality.

    Elisabeth believed that, just as life had emerged from the oceans onto land, a new form of human and environmentally friendly world order could emerge from the oceans to the land. She saw that the borderless oceans required a new form of cooperative governance to protect and preserve the ocean’s precious resources for future generations. She believed fervently that finding a new non-territorial way to govern the oceans was necessary and would teach humankind important lessons for governing our shared planet.

    I first heard Elisabeth speak of these ideas when I was a young assistant professor of international relations at San Francisco State University. I thought she had a vision that was worth fighting for. For me, she was like a pied piper. I immediately asked her if there was a way I could help her to achieve her goal. That led to working with Elisabeth for two years at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara.

    I learned from Elisabeth that the problems of our world were far more than academic — one should accept nothing less than changing a world so badly in need of change. Words were never enough; they must be translated into action.

    Elisabeth held annual Pacem in Maribus (Peace in the Oceans) conferences, bringing together the best minds she could find from throughout the world to work on the multifaceted problems of creating a new law of the seas. In a book we edited together, The Tides of Change, based on one of these conferences held in Malta, Elisabeth wrote, “If the oceans are indeed man’s last frontier on this old earth of scarcity and competition to which we have reduced our common heritage, the law of the seas is the advance post on the long march toward a new world of science and technology, of abundance and cooperation which we have set out to achieve.”

    Elisabeth also created the International Ocean Institute with branches throughout the world that trains individuals from developing countries to better use their ocean resources. She was a tireless campaigner for using the resources of the oceans to benefit those who needed it most rather than only those most technologically advanced.

    After leaving the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, Elisabeth moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I saw her only occasionally, but I noticed that her spirit never waivered and her commitment never waned. On the last few occasions that I saw her she had some difficulty walking and had physically slowed down, but she still traveled the world giving lectures and spreading her vision with the enthusiasm of a young girl.

    Elisabeth was a great world citizen and a citizen of the future world that must be created if humanity is to survive. She was a treasure, and her life becomes part of the common heritage of humankind.
    *David Krieger is president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.