Euthanasia: Disability Hate Crime, and the silence

People gather in front of the front gate of the Tsukui Yamayurien
facility for the disabled in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture,
on  July 26.  (Takeshi Iwashita)

The Australian News Weekly magazine published an excellent article by Paul Russell, the Executive Director of Hope Australia and Vice Chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition-International.

Russell, in his commentary, examines the reaction to the disability hate crime that occurred in a care facility in Sagamirihara, Japan where on July 26, 19 people with disabilities were brutally killed and another 26 people with disabilities were injured.

Russell is essentially commenting on the media response to the killing in his article that he titles: Euthanasia – Disability hate crime: then the rest is silence. He writes

The media characterised the attacks as “senseless” and “incomprehensible”. At one level, this attack on innocent defenceless people by a lone madman is, indeed, “incomprehensible”. But for my many friends in the disability community it is, perhaps, an extreme example of the kind of prejudice that they experience all too often; a chilling and visceral reminder of the subtle and not so subtle discrimination that is never far from them and that echoes through history.

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