SGI's AntiNuclear Efforts

SGI's Antinuclear Activities
Sep 1957, Josei Toda, the second president of the Soka Gakkai, issued a declaration calling for the complete abolition of nuclear weapons.
It has became the foundation of the Soka Gakkai's peace movement and its grassroots activities to promote peace and nuclear abolition.

Toda saw nuclear weapons as an absolute evil, an embodiment of the destructive aspect inherent in the lives of all people that seeks to subjugate, control, and ultimately destroy others.
He believed that nuclear weapons, which threaten the collective right of humanity to exist, should be absolutely condemned. Toda wished to "expose and rip out the claws that lie hidden in the very depths of such weapons."












Toda's successor, SGI President Daisaku Ikeda, has spearheaded and inspired the organization's global peace movement.
His annual Peace Proposals, examining global problems and outlining viable solutions grounded in a Buddhist humanist perspective, suggest broad themes and approaches to the SGI members.
In 2006 Ikeda proposed an International Decade of UN Action for the abolition of nuclear weapons in partnership with civil society.

There are several activities for Peace organized by SGI:

Peace Proposals
Every January 26 since 1983, President Ikeda has published an annual Peace Proposal on the anniversary of the founding of SGI.
Consistently emphasizes the importance of the UN and appeals for the reform of the UN as "the congress of humanity."
Praising President Ikeda’s long-term support for the UN and several global peace movements, the United Nations has honored Daisaku Ikeda with the
– UN Peace Award
– UN Special Commendation for Outstanding NGO Activities
– UN Peace Medal.

It is notable that several propositions presented in the Peace Proposals have been realized in international society.

For example,
– Ikeda called for "a global conference renouncing war" and "the adoption of a Declaration for the Renunciation of War."
– The Hague Appeal for Peace (HAP), the largest civil society international peace conference in history was held in May 1999 in The Hague and created new partnerships between citizens, governments, and international organizations.
– At the HAP attendees adopted a global statement supporting a culture of peace, urging the abolition of war and the elimination of nuclear weapons, and stating that peace is a human right.
– The Hague Appeal for Peace and Justice for the 21st Century, and planned continuing actions to achieve their goals. Moreover, the HAP agenda became an official UN document.
– President Ikeda founded several institutions that engage in the peace research.
– The Institute of Oriental Philosophy (1962)
– The Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research (1996)
– have attracted the attention of intellectuals all over the world as institutes whose studies contribute to world peace.
– The SGI campaign against nuclear weapons began in 1975 collected 10 million signatures on a statement calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons were collected by young Soka Gakkai and presented to Secretary-General of the United Nations Kurt Waldheim at the UN Headquarters.
– In September 1997 David Krieger of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation met Daisaku Ikeda and asked for the cooperation of SGI in collecting Abolition 2000 petition signatures. SGI youth collected "13 million voices of hope" within three months, from Dec 97 through Jan 98 on the Abolition 2000 petition calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons, a monumental effort achieved by young people, under President Ikeda’s strong leadership.



Petition Drives
In 1973, youth members of Soka Gakkai Japan gathered 10 million signatures supporting abolition which Ikeda presented to then Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim at the UN in 1975.Abolition 2000 International Petition: In 1997, SGI members collected over 13 million signatures, mainly in Japan, as part of the Abolition 2000 petition drive. The signatures were presented in 1998 to the chairperson of the Preparatory Committee of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT PrepCom) and to the United Nations Secretary-General through a representative.







http://www.abolition2000.org/
















Exhibitions
The "Nuclear Arms: Threat to Our World" exhibition was first presented in 1982 at the UN Headquarters. The exhibition was viewed by 1.2 million people in 25 cities in 16 countries, including Moscow, Beijing, Paris and New Delhi.

"Nuclear Arms: Threat to Humanity," launched in 1996, is an updated version of "Threat to Our World." It was viewed by about a half million people in 14 cities in eight Latin American countries. During a showing in Mexico in 2002, the youth members of SGI-Mexico collected 60,000 signatures on an antinuclear petition which was submitted to the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL).




















The "Linus Pauling and the Twentieth Century" exhibition introduces the life and achievements of this tireless campaigner for peace and nuclear abolition. Since 1998, it has toured seven cities in the United States including Washington, D.C., and five cities in Japan. To date, it has been viewed by more than one million people.A new international exhibition on nuclear weapons abolition, human security and building a culture of peace will be launched by the SGI in 2007.


Conferences
August 5, 2007
Hiroshima Women's Peace Committee Sponsors A-Bomb Experience Rally

August 8, 2007
Soka Gakkai youth of Hiroshima held the 122nd in a series of "Lectures on Hiroshima" at the Soka Gakkai Hiroshima Ikeda Peace Hall.

September 1, 2007
SGI-Brazil Sponsors Student Conference on Nuclear Abolition
"Nuclear Arms: The Evolving Challenge," commemorated the 50th anniversary of second Soka Gakkai President Josei Toda's call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Professor Arno Wehling, president of the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography




Publications
Factually recording the horror of war as ordinary people experienced itThe youth of Soka Gakkai Japan compiled and published 80 volumes of more than 4,000 individual war and atomic bomb-victim experiences from World War II between 1974 and 1985. The Soka Gakkai Women's Peace Committee in Japan published a 20-volume work of women's war experiences. In 2005, the Soka Gakkai Women's Peace Committee in Japan compiled a DVD of 31 women war survivors talking about their experiences for educational purposes.



Quotes
* Weapons of mass destruction have come into existence through the workings of the human heart: our only hope, then, of reducing or eliminating the terrors they entail must lie squarely in the inner transformation of our lives.
Daisaku Ikeda

* Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?
Russell-Einstein Manifesto, 1955

* . . . the world was not meant to be a prison in which man awaits his execution.
John F. Kennedy

* The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used-accidentally or by decision-defies credibility. The only complete defense is the elimination of nuclear weapons and assurance that they will never be produced again.
Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, 1996

* Weapons of mass destruction cannot be uninvented. But they can be outlawed, as biological and chemical weapons already have been, and their use made unthinkable.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2006


The new global SGI antinuclear exhibition
"From a Culture of Violence to a Culture of Peace:
Transforming the Human Spirit"
“Arms-based Security vs. Human Security"
"Changing Our Worldview"
Facts on global efforts to control and eliminate nuclear weapons.

Contributed by Chew KHian Kee ( Regional YMD Leader, Penang)