[E-rundbrief] Info 535 - Cities Are Not Targets project

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 535 - Hiroshima Peace Culture 
Foundation/ Mayors for Peace: Cities Are Not 
Targets (CANT) project Petition Drive. Please 
tell the nuclear powers that Cities Are Not Targets!

Bad Ischl, 27.4.2007

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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Cities Are Not Targets (CANT) project Petition Drive

Please tell the nuclear powers that Cities Are Not Targets!

Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation

Mayors for Peace calls cities together to build a nuclear-weapon-free world.

Since our experience of the atomic bombing 62 
years ago, Hiroshima has continually called for 
the abolition of nuclear weapons and realization 
of lasting world peace.  Despite our efforts, 
many areas around the world remain trapped in 
chains of hatred, violence and retaliation, our 
planet still bristles with vast arsenals of 
nuclear weapons, and the probability that such 
weapons will be used is increasing.

In response to this crisis, Mayors for Peace, an 
NGO over which we preside that now has 1,578 
member cities in 120 countries and regions, is 
conducting an emergency campaign to eliminate all 
nuclear weapons by 2020 globally.  This is our 2020 Vision Campaign.

The year 2006 was the 10th anniversary of the 
International Court of Justice advisory opinion 
that, ”The threat or use of nuclear weapons would 
generally be contrary to the rules of 
international law applicable in armed conflict, 
and in particular the principles and rules of 
humanitarian law.”  Mayors for Peace marked this 
landmark finding by launching Phase II of our 
2020 Vision Campaign.  The centerpiece of this 
phase is the Good Faith Challenge, a program for 
demanding that all governments abide by the other 
ICJ finding that, ”There exists an obligation to 
pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion 
negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in 
all its aspects under strict and effective 
international control.”  As a further 
contribution by cities, we have also initiated a 
Cities Are Not Targets (CANT) project to demand 
assurances from nuclear weapon states that no 
cities are targeted for nuclear attack.

Please support the Cities Are Not Targets project.

Nuclear weapons are illegal, immoral devices 
designed to obliterate entire cities.  Despite 
the end of the Cold War, the danger of nuclear 
weapons remains virtually unchanged.  We still 
have thousands of nuclear warheads deployed and 
ready to fire on warning.  At the push of a 
button, nuclear-tipped missiles can be on their 
way to a target city.  If such an event were to 
take place, some city, home to children and 
hundreds of thousands of innocent noncombatants, 
would suffer utter devastation.

The Mayors for Peace project is designed to lift 
the voices of cities and citizens to say, 
”No!  You may not target cities.  You may not 
target children.”  Through these activities, we 
intend to bring to the attention of mayors, 
citizens and national leaders the fact that 
cities are, in fact, still being targeted for 
annihilation and the International Court of 
Justice has found this threat itself to be a war 
crime.  Furthermore, we hope this project will 
intensify our demand that the nuclear-weapon 
states fulfill their promise to ”negotiate in 
good faith” to abolish all nuclear weapons.

The goal of this project is not a shifting of 
nuclear weapons away from cities but their total 
elimination.  And, when we speak here of 
”cities,” we refer not to a municipal entity of a 
certain size but to any area in which children 
and non-combatants are living routine daily lives.

Please participate in the petition drive 
associated with this project.  Mayors for Peace 
will deliver your message to the nuclear-weapon 
states and to the United Nations.  Let all 
peoples around the world come together and 
bequeath to our children a genuinely peaceful world free from nuclear weapons!

(* Your name, address and other personal 
information provided here will not be used for any other purpose.)

Please support this petition.

To express your support for our CANT project, 
please print the petition, sign it, and send it 
back to us by post or fax.  Your name, address 
and other personal information provided will not be used for any other purpose.

Mayors for Peace Secretariat

c/o Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation

1-5, Nakajima-cho, Naka-ku, Hiroshima 730-0811, Japan

Tel: +81-82-242-7821

Fax: +81-82-242-7452

Email: mayorcon [at] pcf.city.hiroshima.jp

http://www.2020visioncampaign.org

http://www.mayorsforpeace.org


30.4. - 11.5. WIEN: WILPF- project "Reaching 
Critical Will" - NGOs participation at the 
Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the NPT 
Review Conference 2010 (Non-Proliferation Treaty 
- on nuclear weapons). (Infos: 
www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/2007index.html)

Als einer der Delegierten von österreichischen 
Friedensorganisationen werde ich an der Konferenz teilnehmen. Matthias Reichl

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
     Wolfgangerstr. 26, A-4820 Bad Ischl, Austria,
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