Northern Friends Peace Board calls for North Korea de-escalation
The trustees of the Northern Friends Peace Board write to Theresa May and Boris Johnson about tensions on the Korean Peninsula
Northern Friends Peace Board’s trustees have written to Theresa May and Boris Johnson, as well as to the leaders of the main opposition parties, urging diplomatic and non-military approaches to solving the increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula.
They wrote: ‘We view with increasing alarm the mounting tension regarding North Korea. For the first time in generations, nations’ leaders are talking about the first use of nuclear weapons as an appropriate response to a deteriorating international situation. History is witness to millions of deaths across the globe as a result of the language of escalation.
‘We urge the government to do its utmost to use diplomatic and non-military approaches to de-escalate the tensions. The possible humanitarian and environmental consequences of crossing the nuclear weapons red-line, for the region and indeed for the planet, are barely imaginable.
‘Whilst we are rightly appalled by the use of chemical weapons in Syria, the scale and duration of human suffering arising from nuclear warfare would be many thousands of times worse. This cannot and must not be an acceptable way of dealing with issues in the twenty-first century. Humankind is better than that, and humanity and all life on earth deserve better.’
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