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Forgotten human rights
By Anthony Thanasayan, 10 Dec 1998
Used with permission from Star Publications (M) Berhad
TODAY, people everywhere are celebrating World Human Rights Day. The event is specially significant this time because it's exactly 50 years since advocates took up the cause of human rights.
A Universal Declaration of Human Rights was formally adopted on December 10, 1948, by a United Nations General Assembly comprising people who had witnessed the atrocities of World War II, and were bent on building a better future for their descendants.
Recently Malaysians from all walks of life found themselves embroiled in discussions about what constitutes and what does not constitute human rights.
So intense were the talks that it even trickled down to the disabled community who are just as interested as the average man or woman in the goings-on.
But what does human rights mean to people who depend on wheelchairs, or walking sticks and crutches, to move around?
Plenty, I tell you.
Recently a regular reader of Wheel Power related to me an incident where the rights of physically disabled people were ignored.
William, a non-disabled person, is a volunteer with a local charity home for physically disabled people. One day he needed to use the bathroom at the home urgently. Although he had been there on numerous occasions, this was his very first visit to the residents' bathroom.
William dashed out as quickly as he had gone in! He was horrified at the sight of the filthy toilets.
I knew perfectly well what William experienced for I, too, used to frequent that particular home. But that was more than 10 years ago.
It was obvious the home authorities didn't think much about the rights of their disabled residents, otherwise they wouldn't have left the toilets and the living quarters in such a sorry state.
And it isn't hard really to see the justification behind such negligence: "Stop complaining! You should be grateful to be in this home in the first place and not out there with no home and no one to go to."
We hear that reasoning sometimes too often.
But it isn't only our caretakers who sometimes fail to fully understand our inherent rights as individuals with disabilities.
I can hardly forget the ordeal I went through amidst hundreds of fellow human rights activists -- largely able-bodied -- while attending my first ever (and last) international conference on human rights in Vienna in 1993!
My wheelchair was somewhere in London. I couldn't get to the conference because I couldn't access any of the public transport systems there. I was moved from one hotel to another because the airport's wheelchair wouldn't fit into their posh and elegant bathrooms.
Almost a week into the conference, my wheelchair was delivered to me but by then it was time to go home.
Here at home, I can recall the harrowing experience I had while being carried up a flight of stairs a number of times. Neither can I forget the times I had to control my bladder while attending seminars and workshops at inaccessible venues. Yes, this happened whilst experts presented talks on religious values, human rights, social justice and the caring society.
Some of them promised to do something about it the next time. But most of them forgot.
In the British newsletter Disability Awareness In Action former UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar stated recently: "The disabled community is the largest minority in the world today. Unlike women and children, refugees, and the victims of racial and religious persecution, disabled people have no automatic rights to protection in international law."
As evident in everyday life.
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