Guest Editorial: All lives matter … all means ALL

Wendi Wicks

On Tuesday 25 July, at the Kanagawa Kyodokai at Tsukui Yamayuri En, west of Tokyo, 19 disabled people were stabbed to death as they slept. The killer was a former employee at the residential/rehabilitation facility for disabled people. He moved rapidly through the building – in 50 minutes he killed 10 men and 9 women and injured 24 others. He then drove himself to the police station to hand himself in. He said it was better “that disabled people disappear”.

This was not the first time he had made explicit his belief that disabled people should be eliminated. In February he attempted to hand deliver a letter to the speaker of the Japanese parliament.

In it he outlined in stark terms his belief that disabled people should be killed:

I believe there is still no answer about the way of life for individuals with multiple disabiIities. The disabled can only create misery. I think now is the time to carry out a revolution and to make the inevitable but tough decision for the sake of all mankind … I envision a world where people with multiple disabilities can be euthanased with an agreement from the guardian.”

He claimed he could wipe out a total of 470 disabled individuals and offered a “plot”, to be put before the prime minister, whereby he would kill 260 people, be arrested but only imprisoned for 2 years and then receive plastic surgery and a new identity. All of this would be “for the sake of Japan and world peace”, and would be suitably remunerated by the government.

So how did this tragedy play out in the media? Given the prolonged outpourings of grief and solidarity with those killed when it came to similar multiple killings in Paris, Nice, Orlando and Kabul, one might expect something similar. There one saw wall-to-wall coverage, Twitter storms and trending hashtags; altered profile images to indicate solidarity. There were repeated updates, headlining news bulletins on radio and TV – some talkback hosts made wise sayings, other TV hosts left the soothsaying to their guests. Many attended memorial events or vigils.

But in the case of Tsukui Yamayuri En, Japan’s worst mass killing since World War 2, the response was a roaring silence. Hashtags, memorials, public outrage, panels of soothsayers just didn’t happen for the general public, or in international settings. We disabled people know because we looked.

In contrast, disabled people worldwide reacted with a storm of comment, horror and action. New Zealand disabled people led off with a vigil – most attenders were disabled people and there was no media attention. Protests, memorial services and marches of solidarity followed worldwide. Many excellent blogs with sound analysis were written. But only disabled people mourned in public.

A particularly challenging part of our public mourning and memory was when we found that the men and women killed at Kanagawa Kyodokai would not be named, because, it was said, their relatives were too ashamed to acknowledge having a disabled family member: in effect erasing disabled people from the public record and perpetuating our invisibility. It is an obscenity, felt strongly by us and still stinging. All the disabled people who have learned of this lack of names recoil in either body or spirit.

Sadly, what happened in Japan is symptomatic of the everyday invisibility of disability we experience.  Society sees disabled people as not really needing human rights, because we aren’t fully human. It seems that our names or identities don’t matter. We are pegged as ‘takers’ of society’s precious resources. As reflected in court judgements, it is understandable if disabled people are abused because caring can be difficult and stressful. And if this is understandable, well it may be OK to euthanase them.

The message here, (as in Hitler’s Germany where over half a million disabled people were gassed, starved, neglected, or sent to the death camps), is the opposite of “all lives matter”. To the general public, and in the media, our lives don’t seem to matter, and the realities of how we live are seen to be a good reason for our deaths. There is an invisibility of the humanity of disability.

So Tsukui Yamayuri En is not our first and nor is it an unusual encounter with such attitudes and their consequences. It is most troubling that we encounter similar attitudes as common currency: when disability is seen in negative un-affirming terms; where people believe ‘better dead than disabled’, notably if one needs assistance with bathing, toileting, or getting in and out of bed (loosing dignity in such processes); when we are seen to suffer, have unendurable pain, feel hopeless and a burden. In these ways disabled lives are daily discounted.

While these inimical attitudes exist about disabled people, we will remain at risk of the extermination the Japanese knifeman advocated for – whether in New Zealand or elsewhere.

In this context, any attempt to put up assisted suicide legislation with so-called eligibility criteria will also have deadly consequences. As various select committee reports make clear (Scotland, UK, Victoria, Bulgaria), legal safeguards and criteria cannot make such legislation sufficiently robust. Disabled people deserve much better - it is our world too.

Wendi Wicks is a celebrant, writer and strong advocate for disability rights. She convenes “Not Dead Yet Aotearoa”.