Kathmandu: religious leaders campaign against weapons, millions of signatures collected
The campaign includes a petition drive. The goal is to collect ten million signatures, one million in Nepal alone, and organisers are almost half way from their target with more than four million people already signed up. Eventually, they will be sent to the United Nations, the world’s governments and to political parties.
For Koichi Matsumoto, religious advisor to the UN secretary general, trust is in short supply in modern society. “European and American countries are making weapons, including nuclear weapons, but Asian and African people are the ones suffering from them”. Hence, “we are collecting signatures to support our programme and pressurise” governments.
Nepal is one of the countries suffering from the illegal arms trade. According to the government, at least 10,000 illegal weapons are present in the capital.
Subas Nemwang, the president of Nepal’s constituent assembly, is all for the initiative. “Nepal,” he said, “is moving towards hard times because political parties are in favour of the arms trade and have built up their own private armies.”
Fr Jenu Rakesh, who represented the Catholic Church at the meeting, said, “This programme reminds us that we have been created for peace and God invites us today to live and share that peace.”
At the launch of the campaign, he was joined by the representatives of other religious communities, including Kesab Prasad Chaulagain for Hindus, Nazrul Hussein for Muslims, Nun Guruma for Buddhists, Narendra Pandey for Ba‘hais and Naman Upadhyaya for Jains, who are followers of Jainism, an ancient religion of India based on non-violence.
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