Exhibition on Nuclear Disarmament and Human Security Opens in Vienna

TOKYO, October 5, 2010 - An antinuclear exhibition created by Buddhist association Soka Gakkai
International (SGI), "From a Culture of Violence to Culture of Peace:
Transforming the Human Spirit," was launched at the Rotunda of the Vienna
International Centre on October 4 in cooperation with the NGO Committee on
Peace, Vienna. It will be on display through October 15.

The exhibition's opening reception was attended by some 200 people
including UN officials, diplomats, and NGO activists.

Following a performance by a choir of junior high school students from
the Musikgymnasium Wien, Maher Nasser, director of the United Nations
Information Service (UNIS) Vienna, shared welcoming remarks expressing the
significance of holding this exhibition in Vienna - where the headquarters of
IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the CTBTO (Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test ban Treaty Organization) Preparation Commission are situated.

Hiromasa Ikeda, Vice President of SGI, then introduced a message from SGI
President Daisaku Ikeda in which he noted that achieving a world free of
nuclear weapons is a task of unimaginably vast proportions which must be
undertaken as a global enterprise and stressed that SGI has focused its
efforts on "challenging those aspects of our collective mentality that,
consciously or unconsciously, accept the continued existence of nuclear
weapons."

Ana Maria Cetto, Deputy Director General and Head of the Department of
Technical Cooperation of IAEA, welcomed the exhibition's focus on tackling
apathy and on building human security, saying "In the IAEA, we are convinced
that ensuring human security is key to ensuring global peace."

Also present at the reception were Helmut Bock, Permanent Representative
of Austria to the United Nations in Vienna; Genxin Li, Director of the
Division for External Relations and Legal Affairs of the Preparatory
Commission for CTBTO and Klaus Renoldner, Chairperson of the NGO Committee on
Peace, Vienna, and Representative of International Physicians for the
Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW).

The exhibition consists of 36 panels highlighting the precarious logic of
arms-based security and examining the need to abolish nuclear weapons from
the perspective of human security.

SGI has recently intensified its awareness-raising efforts as part of its
People's Decade for Nuclear Abolition campaign (www.peoplesdecade.org)
, with a special focus on youth. Earlier in 2010, Soka Gakkai youth in Japan
gathered over 2 million signatures on a petition calling for a Nuclear
Weapons Convention which would comprehensively ban nuclear weapons.

SGI is an international Buddhist association with 12 million members that
promotes peace, culture and education. SGI has a 50-year track record of
efforts for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

    Contact:
    Joan Anderson
    Office of Public Information
    Soka Gakkai International
    Tel: +81-3-5360-9475
    Fax: +81-3-5360-9885
    E-mail: janderson[at]sgi.gr.jp

Joan Anderson, Office of Public Information, Soka Gakkai International, Tel: +81-3-5360-9475, Fax: +81-3-5360-9885, E-mail: janderson[at]sgi.gr.jp