‘Every step towards disarmament matters,’ nuclear testing survivors warn

Artist and anti-nuclear activist Karipbek Kuyukov walked through the halls of UN Headquarters in New York on Monday alongside diplomats, scientists and survivors, carrying a message he has spent his life delivering: no one should ever again suffer what his generation endured. 

Mr. Kuyukov, who paints holding the brush with his lips and toes, was among the participants of a symbolic walk ahead of the General Assembly’s high-level meeting on the occasion of the International Day against Nuclear Tests, marked annually on 29 August.

The short procession, part of the StepUp4Disarmament campaign, ended in front of a large photograph on display in the General Assembly building, depicting people demanding the closure of the Semipalatinsk site. 

“I would like to tell our story, the story of Kazakhstan,” Mr. Kuyukov told UN News.

Between 1949 and 1989, the Semipalatinsk site saw 456 nuclear tests. Hundreds of thousands of people living nearby were exposed to elevated levels of radiation, with consequences carried within families across generations. 

“My parents were living witnesses of those tests, and as a result, I was born without arms,” Mr. Kuyukov said. 

He was 20 years old when Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov launched the Nevada-Semipalatinsk anti-nuclear movement.

“The entire nation rose up against this monster, against the Semipalatinsk polygon,” he recalled.

The movement reached far beyond Kazakhstan.

Mr. Kuyukov remembered standing at a protest alongside a chief of the Shoshone people, whose lands lay near the United States test site in Nevada, and joining peaceful rallies at the gates of Semipalatinsk with activists from French Polynesia, where France conducted tests at Mururoa Atoll, and from Japan.

On 29 August 1991, the Semipalatinsk site was shut down, a date the General Assembly later proclaimed, at Kazakhstan’s initiative, as the International Day against Nuclear Tests. This year marks 35 years since the closure. 

“I can say with pride that my country, Kazakhstan, began its path to sovereignty precisely with that peaceful decision,” Mr. Kuyukov said. “I believe this is a great honour for us and can serve as a worthy example for other countries.”

Addressing participants of the walk, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu said the silence that fell upon Semipalatinsk 35 years ago “did not happen by chance”. 

“It was achieved through the determination of people, communities and leaders who rejected nuclear testing,” she said. 

Kazakhstan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Kairat Umarov described the walk as “a very simple but very powerful way to remind us that every step towards disarmament matters”. 

This year also marks the 30th anniversary of the opening for signature of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). Robert Floyd, Executive Secretary of the CTBT Organization, told the young people taking part in the walk that disarmament is “a journey that works across generations”. 

“The day will come when your generation will lead, will make the decisions, will be in the boardrooms, will be in the assembly halls,” he said. “And we will be cheering on your great steps forward.”

Speaking later in the General Assembly, Ms. Nakamitsu warned that concerns about a possible resumption of nuclear explosive testing have re-emerged amid deep geopolitical tension.

She recalled the Secretary-General’s message: “the world must never witness another nuclear explosion.”

The President of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, stressed that the consequences of nuclear explosions know no borders.

“In an interconnected world such as ours, there is no truly ‘remote region’ immune from the effects or dangers of nuclear testing,” she said.

Among the speakers was Tina Cordova, a fourth-generation survivor of the 1945 Trinity test in New Mexico, who also joined the morning’s symbolic walk.

“We were the first people exposed to radiation anyplace in the world as ash fell from the sky in the days after the bomb,” she told the Assembly, describing five generations of cancer in her family. “We were never warned before or after of the danger, so we lived our lives off the land as we always did.”

She closed with an appeal to the delegates, saying that “after 81 years, it is time we set our families, our children and grandchildren free from nuclear threat.”

For Mr. Kuyukov, the fight is now about those who come next. Seeing young people join movements against nuclear weapons always reminds him that “in war, it is innocent children who suffer first.”

“The future is in their hands,” he said. “They, too, must secure a safe world for the next generation. We have experience and we can share it because we know how this is done.” 

Asked what he would say to world leaders at a time when, in his words, the situation in the world has become dangerously tense, the artist called for reconciliation. 

“To reach a new world – one of kindness, mercy and compassion – we need to let go of old grievances and past mistakes and leave them in history,” he stressed. “Now, we can only move forward together, showing the way to the new generation.”