Disability hate crime - we need to listen

The story quickly fell off news websites. Only one journalist to my knowledge, Yuichi Sakaguchi, senior staff writer at the Nikkei Asian Review made the hate crime connection. Little wonder that Hingsburger should ask: Why isn't it a hate crime?

I think the answer goes deeper than 'they don't get it.' I think it's because, maybe a little, people see the logic of what he's done.

And that scares the hell out of me.

These fears are real; they are held by close and trusted friends and my own family.

And that's why people like Australian journalist and euthanasia enthusiast Andrew Denton's patronising dismissal of Joan Hume's concerns about euthanasia and disability on the ABC program Q and A a few months ago has angered many in the disability community.

You see, Denton visited places like Belgium, Holland and Oregon, where euthanasia and or assisted suicide is practiced under legal cover, and asked those who run peak bodies for disabled people and senior citizens if they knew of any abuses. He found none. I have been to Belgium and Holland too and I found the opposite. So, I guess we did not talk to the same people.

But here's the rub: the fears that come from hard experience don't really appear in empirical studies. These things are hard to measure. In terms of euthanasia and assisted suicide, there are plenty of anecdotes and assumptions that can be drawn from any number of cases that point to the reality that such discrimination and abuse does exist. A quiet word; an attitude; a suggestion; an expectation; a sense of burden; an assumption that life with disability is not a worthy life. It is only common sense to observe that such abuses defy empirical scrutiny.

We can't test everything that matters to us by studies and surveys. Sometimes we simply have to rely on the depth of sentiment held by those who feel the pain; who sense the risks. We accept those standards in so many other areas of social policy on discrimination but, somehow, when people living with disability raise their voices against euthanasia in similar terms they're told patronisingly that its not about them. But what is a terminal illness if not an acquired disability?

Such responses display precisely the same sort of ableism evident in the words of the Japanese killer. Ableism is defined as a set of practices and beliefs that assign inferior value (worth) to people who have developmental, emotional, physical or psychiatric disabilities. That some people are willing to decide for people with disability that their deep seated concerns are misguided and therefore not to be factored in to public policy settings fits that description.

Not that all people with disabilities have had such negative experiences of ableist discrimination that instinctively creates deep reservations about euthanasia and assisted suicide; but many do. Craig Wallace, former President of People With Disabilities Australia is one such articulate voice. Craig tweeted frequently and noted the lack of outrage at the Japanese hate crime:

Oh and I'll consider euthanasia when people change their Facebook profiles to mourn the disabled victims. Why aren't they?

Indeed.