by Jayantha Dhanapala
Jayantha Dhanapala
Jayantha Dhanapala is a former United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Disarmament Affairs (1998-2003) and a former Ambassador of Sri Lanka to the USA (1995-7) and to the UN Office in Geneva (1984-87). He is currently the 11th President of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs; a member of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United Nations University Council and several other advisory boards of international bodies.
As a Sri Lankan diplomat, entering the Foreign Ministry in 1965, Mr. Dhanapala served in London, Beijing, Washington D.C., New Delhi and Geneva and represented Sri Lanka at many international conferences. He chaired many of these conferences, too, including the historic NPT Review and Extension Conference of 1995. He was Director of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) from 1987-92.
Mr. Dhanapala has received many international awards and honorary doctorates, has published five books and several articles in international journals and lectured widely. He was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in December 1938 and earned an M.A. in International Studies from American University in 1976.
No More Hiroshimas
As a six year-old Asian boy from a predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka I learned of the nuclear bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the USA on August 6, 1945 with utter horror and disbelief. Notwithstanding the provocation of the attack on Pearl Harbour, the instantaneous mass killing of an estimated 80,000 civilians, followed later by many more thousands of deaths from radiation, at a time when World War II was obviously ending has always been inexplicable to me--unless it was to announce the arrival of the age of nuclear imperialism. Later, at the San Francisco Conference of 1951, my Government declined reparations from Japan with the leader of the Sri Lanka delegation quoting the Buddha “Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.”
No comments:
Post a Comment