Thousands Back Nuclear Treaty in U.N. Protest

Thousands of activists marched past the United Nations on Sunday, urging diplomats reviewing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to remember the horrors of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki six decades ago and not allow them to be repeated.

Chanting “No War, No Nukes” and carrying signs saying “No More Hiroshima, No More Nagasaki,” the marchers headed to Central Park, where they formed a human peace symbol.

Organizers put the number of protesters at 40,000.

The mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, told the crowd that the survivors of the bombs were “the only people who have had the experience of nuclear war.”

“For them the world is a family, and we need to work together so that no member of this family will have to suffer the pain that they suffered in 1945,” Akiba said.

One of the survivors, Sunao Tsuboi, was a 20-year-old college student when the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. Speaking through an interpreter, he spoke of the physical and mental anguish he had experienced, saying he had suffered from prostate and colon cancer, among other ailments.

“After so many years I have survived, but I have many, many illnesses,” he said. “That’s why we call the atomic bomb the absolute evil.”

A monthlong review of the nonproliferation treaty begins today at the U.N. -- a process done every five years.

The treaty calls for nations without nuclear weapons to pledge not to pursue them, and the five that acknowledge having nuclear weapons -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China -- to pledge to move toward eliminating them.

But there are concerns about the treaty’s effectiveness, and contentious issues have complicated the process -- from North Korea’s withdrawal from the treaty to the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Organizers of the rally said their aims were to hasten negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons and to have nations agree to a nuclear “no first use” policy as the weapons are being phased out.