G7 leaders gather amid wide protests

Bloc rolls out fresh curbs on 1st day of summit in attempt to squeeze Moscow

The G7 leaders began their annual summit in Japan's chosen venue at Hiroshima, where a large number of protesters took to the streets expressing their disapproval of the gathering.

The three-day summit began on Friday morning with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida greeting other leaders and their partners at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, where they laid wreaths for hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives when the United States dropped an atomic bomb over the city in 1945.

Hundreds of protesters from all over the country, even abroad, gathered in Hiroshima's Funairi Daiichi Park, not far from the summit's venue, to decry the finger-pointing bloc that advertises its own version of world order.

Crowds of protesters rallied around the summit venue, chanting slogans such as "US Imperialists, Number One Terrorist!","Stop the Lies!", "Stop the War!","Stop QUAD Alliance!" and "Stop NATO Alliance!"

Among the demonstrators was Cody Urban, a member of a US anti-war civic group, who told Xinhua that the US-led G7 summit is "a cabal of the rich nations" that create tensions.

"It's important for us as Americans to come here and say that our people are not on the same page with the US government," said the 32-year-old who traveled all the way from his hometown in the US state of Oregon.

"We are united against the agenda of the G7, as its agenda is for the rich governments. It's not an agenda for peace and stability," he said.

The G7 group comprises the US, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. The European Union is a "nonenumerated member".

Japan, as G7 president for this year's summit, also invited leaders from India, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Australia, Comoros and the Cook Islands.

In a declaration, protesters said the G7 summit seeks to advance military alliances in the name of freedom and democracy, and that the essence of the summit was a meeting where the rich bloc forces other countries to follow its rules.

As of Friday, protests and rallies have been held at multiple locations in Hiroshima and other Japanese cities, as people from both home and abroad took to the streets to oppose the gathering.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Japanese Red Cross Society, which witnessed firsthand the "unimaginable suffering and devastation" caused by the atomic bombs, called on the G7 states to sign and ratify the United Nations' Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

A total of 68 states have ratified the treaty, and 27 more have signed it. No G7 members have done so yet.

Hiroshima legacy

In a joint statement, the organizations also asked G7 countries to refrain from the rhetoric that envisages or speculates about the use of nuclear weapons, and take immediate and concrete steps to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons being used.

"With almost 13,000 nuclear weapons in the arsenals of the nuclear-armed states, many with much more destructive power than the Hiroshima bomb and ready to be launched within minutes, that dark path would have catastrophic effects," the two organizations said.

One of the key outcomes from the first day of the summit was an agreement on new sanctions against Russia.

In a statement, the G7 leaders said the bloc "will impose further sanctions and measures to increase the costs to Russia and those who are supporting its war effort". It added that it will "starve Russia of G7 technology, industrial equipment and services that support its war machine".

The announcement came after several G7 countries, including the US and the UK, announced their own new measures on Russia's minerals sector, targeting imports of aluminum, diamonds, copper and nickel in a bid to choke Moscow.

The Russian mission to the EU said on Thursday that international sanctions are those adopted by the UN Security Council and "they are the only legitimate ones".

Russia reserves the right to take all necessary measures to neutralize security threats originating from Ukraine, Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzya said during a Security Council meeting, Russian news agency TASS reported on Friday.

Nebenzya said the West never remembers the protection of civilians and the norms of international humanitarian law in the case of the shelling of Donbas cities by the Ukrainian armed forces.

Xinhua contributed to this story.