On Saturday 4 August, over 150 cyclists pedalled off as pacemakers for a peaceful and just world without nuclear weapons as part of the 8th Pacemakers Cycle Marathon. "The field of participants had been fully booked for months, which illustrates the steadily growing interest in this probably unique cycling demonstration in Germany," reports Roland Blach, Managing Director of the DFG-VK Baden-Württemberg and coordinator of the Pacemakers.
The partly new route through Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate and, for the first time, a few kilometres through Hesse led from Bretten via the refreshment stops in Heidelberg, Mannheim, Kaiserslautern and Neustadt/Weinstraße back to Bretten to mark the 67th anniversary of the atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year's distance was 340 kilometres.
With their peace ride, the Pacemakers are emphasising the "atomwaffenfrei.jetzt" campaign and the global association "Mayors for Peace", in which over 5,000 cities in more than 150 countries, including 402 cities in Germany alone, are involved. During the 15-hour ride through south-west Germany, the Pacemakers will use loudspeaker announcements and speeches at the refreshment stops to remember the victims of the atomic bombings and the complex, still highly topical issue of nuclear armaments.
With the appeal "5 to 12. nuclear-free.now", the Pacemakers are calling on German politicians to support the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Germany, to campaign for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East and to support a binding ban and the destruction of all nuclear weapons worldwide.
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