Sunday, August 8, 2021

Tokyo Olympics: IOC's refusal to honor Hiroshima-Nagasaki bomb victims is a huge shame

The refusal of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to participate in the commemorative events for the 76th anniversary of the nuclear holocaust in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, consists an immense insult to the memory of the thousands of bomb's victims as well as to the Japanese people in general. 

Furthermore, the IOC decided not to call on athletes and officials to have a moment of silence during the Games at Olympic venues and elsewhere on August 6th, the day when the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima 76 years ago. 

Toshiyuki Mimaki, 79, acting chair of the Hiroshima Prefecture Confederation of Atomic Bomb Sufferers Organizations, was disheartened by the announcement.

“I’m disappointed,” Mimaki said. “I don’t think having a brief moment of prayer would meet with objections from people around the world" and added: "It’s a shame that Bach came to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and yet it didn’t make him feel like calling for a moment of silence"

Behind the name of "no politics", the IOC hides its hypocrisy. The decision to avoid any commemoration of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bomb victims during the Olympic Games consists a political act and shows the actual intentions and dominant ideology of the IOC. 

The dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the U.S. will always be remembered as the most horrific imperialist war crime of the 20th century.

on athletes and officials to have a moment of reflection at Olympic venues and elsewhere.

on athletes and officials to have a moment of reflection at Olympic venues and elsewhere.