TOKYO, October 10 (IPS) –
The screening room on the Toda Peace Memorial Corridor in Tokyo fell silent as Kazakh filmmaker and human rights advocate Aigerim Seitenova stepped ahead in a black T-shirt and inexperienced skirt to introduce her 31-minute documentary, “Jara – Radioactive Patriarchy: Girls of Qazaqstan.” The screening occasion was co-organized by the Kazakh Nuclear Frontline Coalition (ASQAQQNFC), the Soka Gakkai Peace Committee, and Peace Boat, with help from Japan NGO Community for Nuclear Weapons Abolition (JANA).
The corridor itself is symbolic in Japan’s peace motion. It’s named after Josei Toda, the second president of the Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai, who in 1957 made his historic Declaration Calling for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons earlier than 50,000 youth members. That attraction has turn into an ethical pillar of Soka Gakkai’s world marketing campaign for peace and disarmament.
Reclaiming Girls’s Voices
“This movie was made to make seen the voices of ladies who’ve lived in silence. They aren’t victims—they’re storytellers and changemakers,” Seitenova advised the viewers of diplomats, journalists, college students and peace activists.
Her documentary, Jara—that means “wound” in Kazakh—tells the tales of ladies from Semey, previously referred to as Semipalatinsk, the positioning of 456 Soviet nuclear assessments performed between 1949 and 1989.
In contrast to earlier movies that centered on bodily devastation and incapacity attributable to nuclear testing, Jara explores the unseen and intergenerational impacts: the stigma, the psychological scars, and the inherited concern of bearing kids.
“Most movies present Semey as ‘essentially the most nuked place on Earth.’ I needed to point out resilience as an alternative of concern—to reclaim our story in our personal voice,” she mentioned.
Breaking the Silence
Seitenova’s private connection to the problem started with humiliation.
As a college pupil in Almaty, the biggest metropolis in Kazakhstan, when she launched herself as being from Semey, a classmate mockingly requested if she had “a tail.”
“That second stayed with me,” she recalled. “It made me realise that nuclear hurt shouldn’t be solely bodily. It lives on in prejudice and silence.”
That have would later drive her to create a movie that breaks that silence.
Patriarchy and Nuclear Energy
In Jara, girls seem not as passive victims however as energetic contributors of their communities, confronting the legacies of secrecy and discrimination.
“In militarised societies, nuclear weapons are symbols of superiority,” Seitenova mentioned in her speech. “Peace and cooperation are dismissed as weak— as female. That’s the mindset we should problem.”
Her feminist perspective connects nuclear weapons and patriarchy, arguing that each methods thrive on domination and energy over others.
From the Steppes to World Advocacy
Creator made a documentary of the 2018 convention which Seitenova participated. Credit score:INPS Japan
Born right into a third-generation household affected by radiation publicity in Semey, Seitenova mentioned her activism was impressed by “quiet endurance and the absence of open dialogue.”
In 2018, she joined the Youth for CTBTO and Group of Eminent Individuals (GEM) ‘Youth Worldwide Convention’ organised by the Kazakh authorities. Through the five-day programme, younger representatives from nuclear-weapon, non-nuclear and nuclear-dependent states travelled together with nuclear disarmament specialists in a single day by prepare from Astana to Kurchatov, visiting the previous check web site. “It was the primary time I noticed the land that formed my folks’s historical past,” she mentioned.
She cites Togzhan Kassenova’s Atomic Steppe and Ray Acheson’s Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy as works that helped her articulate how nuclear coverage and gender inequality are intertwined.
Shared Struggling, Shared Hope
In October, Seitenova travelled to Japan to take part within the twenty fourth World Congress of the Worldwide Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear Struggle (IPPNW) in Nagasaki, assembly survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“Japan and Kazakhstan share the expertise of nuclear struggling,” she mentioned. “However we are able to rework that ache into dialogue—and into peace.”
That spirit carried into the Tokyo screening, the place diplomats, journalists and peace activists mentioned nuclear justice, gender equality and youth participation.
Turning Ache into Energy
By her organisation, the Kazakh Nuclear Frontline Coalition (ASQAQQNFC), Seitenova works to attach nuclear-affected communities with policymakers implementing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
“The battle for nuclear justice shouldn’t be concerning the previous—it’s concerning the future,” she mentioned. “It’s about making certain that nobody else has to stay with the results of nuclear weapons.”
Because the applause stuffed the Toda Peace Memorial Corridor, the resonance was unmistakable—linking a corridor named for a person who condemned the bomb to the wind-scarred plains of Semey, the place the voices of ladies are ultimately being heard.
This text is dropped at you by INPS Japan in collaboration with Soka Gakkai Worldwide, in consultative standing with the UN’s Financial and Social Council (ECOSOC).
INPS Japan
IPS UN Bureau
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