For
the second time, the extremely active
medical student group in Marilia has
taken to
the streets of their city and broucht across the message that as long
as
nuclear weapons are still around, no city is safe - not even a place
like
Marilis in Brazil.
Below, you'll find the article and the photos of the event:
On August 25th, 2007, Marília’s Medical School
promoted its
second Target-X Day: Aiming at Disarmament. This is a
great partnership between the
International Federation of Medical Students’ Associations - IFMSA and
IPPNW. This year,
we wanted to reach a different target group, so instead of
staying in a shopping mall like last year, we had two stations: one in
front of
the municipal theatre, and another one near the main bus station.
Another
innovation for this year was to talk about fire arms as well, since Brazil
has a
special issue with them.
In
each station, we had volunteers who
handed out brochures with information on nuclear weapons and fire arms.
We also
had some tables and chairs, and behind each chair we had a poster with
more
information about fire arms in Brazil.
On
the floor, we drew a big “X” with red
tape, and in its center we put a poster saying “If a bomb hit the local
hospital
such and such would be the impacts”. We had another four posters on the
floor,
which represented specific city points, displayed more or less
accordingly to
the position they’d have if the red “X” was a map of Marília’s
city, and we
included in each poster what the impact on those areas would have been,
considering that the bomb was thrown at the local hospital, which
corresponded
to the center of the “X”. Our volunteers actually calculated what the
real
distances were, looked up what the impacts would be, and came up with a
scale
for the red “X” on the floor. The visitors were pretty impressed by
this.
Each
station had volunteers who told the
story about Sadako Sassaki, a girl who suffered from the Hiroshima bomb;
they explained about what the
origami called tsuru symbolizes, and taught people how to make them. We
also
had some mobiles made of tsurus ready to sell. With the money from our
sales,
we basically covered up all of the money we had used to develop this
campaign.
Some
Brazilians asked us WHY we, as medical
students, care about nuclear weapons if Brazil doesn’t have any.
Our answer
was:
1-
By raising awareness among our people,
maybe we'll be able to make people from all over the world aware of the
damage
nuclear weapons do, so we can count on this domino effect to spread
awareness
around the world.
2-
If we talk about nuclear disarmament,
we're also talking about peace promotion. So, we reinforce the
importance of a
peace culture, by telling the story of Sadako Sassaki.
3-
If by any chance there's a nuclear war,
the entire world will suffer, so here is another link between Brazil
and the nuclear weapons.
4-
Finally, Brazil
is a third world country,
and it is unacceptable that so much money is being invested in nuclear
weapons,
and NOT in our country – as well as in other developing countries.
This
year, we reached over 500 people from
9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.. Some visitors just got the brochures, and
continued on
their ways, but we’re positive they’ll at least read some information
on
nuclear weapons and fire arms, and reflect upon them. Others were
really
interested in our campaign, asked us questions; some of them even
debated with
the volunteers, but in the end everyone agreed that the world would be
a much
better place if all kinds of weapons had never existed, and that peace
prevailed over violence.
Thatyana
Turassa Ernani
Former
National Officer in Human Rights and Peace (NORP) for IFLMS – Brazil
Representative
of IPPNW Students in Brazil
Click
here to see the pictures and read the report of their first Target
installation in August of 2006
