Beijing Uproar

Beijing Uproar

Dear Editor

During early summer, disabled groups reacted with outrage to an official guide for assistants at the Beijing Olympic Games that describes them as unsocial, stubborn and defensive. The guide for Chinese volunteers at the Games this summer explains that disabled people are a “special group” with “unique personalities and ways of thinking”.

The section of the manual entitled “Skills for helping the disabled” goes on to say: “Some physically disabled are isolated, unsocial, and introspective. They can be stubborn and controlling…defensive and have a strong sense of inferiority.

“Sometimes they are overly protective of themselves, especially when they are called crippled or paralyzed. Does not use “cripple” or “lame” even if you are just joking.”

The guide, distributed to 100,000 volunteers before the Olympics in August and Paralympics in September, sparked outrage in among disabled groups.

“I’m stunned,” said Simone Aspic, a parliamentary campaigner at the UK Disabled people’s Council. “It’s not just the language but the perception that in 2008 we are considered a race apart. Disabled people are introverted and stubborn the same way as anyone else is.” The handbook notes that “often optically disabled people are introverted” and that physically disabled people can be mentally healthy.
“They show no differences in sensation, reaction, memorization and thinking mechanisms from other people, but they might have unusual personalities because of disfigurement and disability,” it said.
“Never stare at their disfigurement. A patronizing or condescending attitude will easily sensed by them, even for a brain-damaged patient.”

The advice reflects decades of discrimination in China against mentally and physically disabled people, who total 83 million – equivalent to the population of Germany.
The Communist Party’s desire for a healthy nation, characterized by the one child policy, fostered deep prejudices that extended to forced sterilizations, bans on marriages between disabled people and abortions of abnormal fetuses.

Most disabled people are from poor, rural areas. Those in affluent society were hidden away until public attitudes softened in the 1990s. Besides improved legal rights, there has been social progress. The Chinese now refer to can ji ren, or people with disabilities, instead of can fei, the handicapped and deficient.

Regards,

Tom Chambers
Disability Campaigner
“The Billy Ranch”
Newport
Co. Mayo