War in Iraq Arouses Disability Rights Advocates
By Kay Schriner (kays@uark.edu)
The disability community knows that war creates political and economic instability and siphons off resources that could otherwise be dedicated to the creation of a just society where every man, woman, and child has a chance at a decent life. Many disability rights advocates also point out that war creates disability, pain, and suffering for multitudes - which impose long-term costs for treatment, rehabilitation, and support. To the disability community, war means there will be additional barriers to the achievement of equality that is the centerpiece of the worldwide disability rights movement.
Disabled Peoples International
As Disabled Peoples International says, "Peace is a disability issue." At its meeting in Japan in October, 2002, DPI issued the Sapporo Platform, which restates the position on peace DPI developed in 1982 at an event in Hiroshima, Japan, the site of the U.S.'s World War II use of a nuclear bomb on the civilian Japanese population.
The statement issued by DPI makes the connection between peace and disability issues starkly. It says:
Disabled people all over the world know from their deepest personal experience, the capacity of war to cast its mantle of death and destruction over life and limb. The ability of modern weapons of war to devastate a people, to sear human memory with permanent scars of personal tragedy, to shatter the dreams and hopes of children, to maim and injure, is nowhere more eloquently proclaimed than here, the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima.
Everyday the absolute sanctity of human life is asserted by the aspirations of this planet's 500 million disabled people. The creation of disability and the ending of life by the waging of war is an abomination. Yet the accumulation of the engines of war gains pace.
The talents of human kind are turned from the satisfaction of people's needs to the invention of more and more horrific devices of destruction.
The products of human labors, wrested from the earth with all the ingenuity of generations of men and women, are dissipated in gigantic stockpiles of armaments which are of benefit to no one. The power of cooperation amongst individuals and the organizing capacity of the human race are squandered in the creation of gigantic war complexes whose sole intent is the destruction of people.
People with disabilities increasingly are developing strong ties with other progressive movements. In London, people with disabilities marched on Saturday, February 15 alongside thousands of others opposed to the war. And the Council of Canadians with Disabilities is calling on Canadians to share its anti-war stance in any upcoming forums where there are discussions about the a war against Iraq.
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