PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT

 

PEOPLE FOR NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT  
HIROSHIMA DAY PRESS RELEASE
NUCLEAR WEAPONS CONVENTION

As the 67th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki approaches on 6th and 9th August,
People for Nuclear Disarmament NSW's International Nuclear Weapons
Campaigner John Hallam has called for Australia to bolster its
support for a nuclear weapons convention that would outlaw nuclear
weapons forever.


According to Mr Hallam,
“It is clear that even now, more than 20 years after the cold war has
supposedly ended,that there are still more than enough warheads in
the US and Russian arsenals to not only end civilisation in
approximately 40 minutes, but to severely impact some 95% of complex
land-based life-forms, and to do so by accident, miscalculation, or
malfunction.”

“Even a 'small' nuclear war between say, India and Pakistan, involving
approximately 200 Hiroshima-Sized warheads targeting megacities could
produce a 'prompt' bodycount of up to 150 million and 'nuclear
winter' effects from the millions of tonnes of smoke lifted high into
the stratosphere that could produce up to a billion subsequent deaths
from famine. A US-Russia nuclear 'exchange' would end what we call
civilisation and produce the largest temperature drops since the last
ice-age.”

“Nuclear abolitionists worldwide are committed to ensuring that nuclear
weapons – not merely nonexistent ones in Iran, but the all-too-real
and numerous ones in the US, Russia, China, France, Israel, India,
Pakistan, the UK, and the tiny DPRK arsenal – are decisively
eliminated as a matter of urgency as befits weapons that threaten
human survival.  

“To this end we advocate a Nuclear Weapons Convention, similar to the
Chemical Weapons Convention, that would not only make nuclear weapons
possession by any country illegal but would establish a comprehesve
monitoring and verification system to make cheating physically
impossible. A model Nuclear Weapons Convention has already been
several times adopted by the UN General Assembly. It is vital that
the Australian government get forcefully behind this convention.”

“PND, the Hiroshima Day Committee and the Centre for Peace and Conflict
Studies at Sydney University have bought out to Sydney former Soviet
Strategic rocket forces officer, Colonel Valery Yarynich, to talk
about accidental nuclear war and the dangers posed by nuclear
weapons.

Colonel Yarynich will speak at a forum at the NSWTF (Mary St, Surry Hils) on
6Aug at 6pm, together with author Paul Ham, and PND Nuclear Weapons
Campaigner John Hallam.(Inquiries John Hallam 9810-2598 0416-500-793)

Colonel Yarynich will also be available to media at the Hiroshima Rally on 5
Aug 12 noon in Hyde Park North, together with MP Jamie Parker, Rita
Mallia (CFMEU), and Dennis Doherty.(John Hallam 9810-2598
0416-500-793)

In addition, Colonel Valery will be launching the Human Survival project
at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies on 8Aug 4-6pm Rm 030 New
Law School Building. (Inquiries Prof. Peter King, 0422-647-025, John
Hallam 9810-2598, 0416-500-793,).

Col. Valery will also be speaking at the Lowy Institute on 9Aug, at the
Australian Institute of International Affairs on 15th, and
in Canberra to DFAT and CNND on 14th.

John Hallam
h9810-2598
m0416-500-793