(By Raul Pangalangan, Philippine Daily
Inquirer,11.04.2008)
MANILA, Philippines -The Philippine Senate will soon
be called upon to ratify the Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities. These are the forgotten human
rights, rarely the stuff of headlines, banners and mass
protests but, when violated, cause pain and sadness just
the same. We must support our senators in the righteous
work of ratifying this Convention, and support them in
palpable and unmistakable terms. Why are disability
rights often relegated to the legislative backburner?
First, disability rights are most often violated in
what is called the "private sphere" that does not involve
the state. When we deal with other, more typical human
rights violations, it is the government that is first and
foremost "the usual suspect." As long as the government's
hand is not implicated, it seems, the attitude is that
discrimination on the basis of disability is someone
else's problem.
Consider censorship and its chilling effect on free
speech, for instance, and you might think of, say, the
secretary of justice and his "media advisories." On the
other hand, when it comes to respecting the rights of
persons with disabilities, the most typical culprit is
usually a private person. It can be a bank that refuses
to allow a blind person to deposit a P5,000 crossed
check. It can be a 5-star hotel that initially balks at
building a wheelchair ramp because it didn't blend with
the design of its driveway. It can be a cab driver too
impatient to wait for a paraplegic's wheelchair to be
folded and kept in the trunk.
I learned that recently Cebu Pacific Air - and I'm
otherwise a fan of this airline, I hasten to add, because
they taught me the supreme convenience of booking flights
via the Internet - refused to allow 10 deaf passengers on
a flight to Boracay. All 10 were already seated inside
the plane, when the crew told them to disembark, citing
their policy that blind and deaf passengers had to be
properly accompanied in order to be treated as "regular
passengers." If unaccompanied, "he/she may be accepted
for carriage provided he/she can take care of
himself/herself on the ground and in-flight."
The irony was that four members of the group were
visiting Americans who had flown all the way to the
Philippines on their own, without a hitch, and had
demonstrably met the internationally stringent standards
of other airlines. They had come to attend the grand
centennial of the Philippine School for the Deaf, the
oldest such school in the Philippines. They hadn't been
apprised of the policy in advance. Worst of all, though
they were promised a full refund, what they received was
short by P590, the agent's service fee apparently. (In
the end, only two of the passengers were allowed to
board.)
Second, there are functional grounds for exclusion.
Cebu Pacific, for instance, can cite the need to
communicate to the deaf passengers in case of an
emergency, which brings us to the third reason: Equal
treatment is not cost-free. In the case of the deaf
passengers, it entails either a companion (cost to be
borne by the deaf passenger) or administrative
arrangements to meet the specific disability (cost to be
borne by the airline).
The misconception, however, is that the other, more
infamous human rights violations are different: that they
always entail state action, cannot be explained by any
practical rationale whatsoever, and are cost-free. That
is not true. Ideas may be censored by Justice Secretary
Raul Gonzalez, but they may also be stifled by teachers
or school administrators-except now we pierce the veil of
state action and ask "What are the victim's rights?"
rather than "Who violated his rights?" Historically,
racial discrimination ratified in the law the
inequalities in education, opportunities and wealth that
existed in fact-except now we know better, and know in
our hearts that bigotry can always parade itself as
race-neutral and functional. And finally, all equality
claims entail costs: maternity leave entails a few
months' paid leave and can wreak havoc with personnel
management-except that now we have arrived at a consensus
that mothers have a right to be in the workplace and that
we must all chip in to secure that place, for their sake
as well as our consciences.
I had earlier written a piece titled "The
'disabled'-and us, the temporarily abled," and called
upon the "robust and healthy to see themselves in the
shoes, nay, in the wheelchairs, of persons with
disabilities," since we all are merely "biding our time
until our [own] powers wither away: our eyes dim,
the hearing fades, the knees and joints corrode" and the
inevitable disabilities come upon all lives.
In the Philippine campaign to ratify the Disability
Rights Convention, the real impediment is one of attitude
and philosophy. Our message should be, in the words of
the Supreme Court speaking through Chief Justice Artemio
Panganiban, that equality is "rooted not merely on
charity or accommodation, but on justice for all" and
that these are "legal rights [that we must
protect] not as a matter of compassion but as a
consequence of law and justice."
The Disability Rights Convention asserts the universal
claim to equal dignity, but now we fight the battle in
the trenches in Manila. Here we find deep-seated cultural
biases, a combination of Darwinian indifference and
fatalistic resignation. Yet precisely because the local
culture is largely inhospitable to claims by persons with
disabilities, precisely for that reason we must secure
their claims by law and, given native biases, by an
international law that the global community can
oversee.
Source: http://opinion.inquirer.net/
