Games spotlight China's disabled

tauringhuang.

The troupe's My Dream series, which during the Parlympics was in its fifth incarnation, is truly spell-binding.

A deaf ballerina pirouettes the dying swan, two blind brothers hold hands and sing a poignant duet in sequined black suits, while a pair of deaf dancers kung fu tumble to a perfectly-timed Peking opera score played by blind musicians.

At the end of the show the excitement is palpable. The audience are out of their seats, applauding madly and waving and cheering at the performers who wave back.

China has enacted a wealth of laws protecting the rights of the disabled. This year the government ratified the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

On paper at least, China's disabled are guaranteed access to jobs and education.

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But rights groups say poverty and discrimination creates a very different reality. At the extreme end of the scale, disabled children are conscripted into begging for gangs or working as slave labour while others face huge difficulties in getting university placements and jobs.

Although there is an official quota that 1.5 per cent of government jobs should go to the disabled, the rule is frequently ignored, says Human Rights Watch in a recent report.

Disabled rights groups and activists routinely face repression, it adds.

Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer and champion of disabled rights, is now serving a four year sentence at Yinan County Detention Centre for exposing a forced abortions scandal.

The fundamental problem is that there are no laws in China that clearly protect disabled people's rights to be treated the same as able-bodied citizens, says Hui Ling's Meng.

"There's this idea that disabled people need our help," she says. "It's like a top-down system. Disabled people don't have the right to control their own lives. It's always the government or other people that tell them what to do. They don't have the freedom to make their own choices in life."

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Hui Ling's aim is getting people with learning difficulties – called trainees at her centre – accepted into the local community as regular members of society by giving them skills and confidence.

While the Paralympics may shine the spotlight on the disabled for a while and prompt Beijing to spruce up some disabled facilities, it is uncertain whether it will have any long lasting benefit, says Meng.

"The Paralympics have done a lot to improve life for the disabled. But at the end of the day it is only a festival. How can we tell whether things will continue to improve once it is all over?"

sysop

my god!