Japan Press Weekly

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2016 November 23 - 29 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Disabled persons in national meeting resolve to work for fairer society

The National Conference to Support the Life and Right of Disabled Persons (Shozenkyo) on November 23 held its 50th annual national meeting and determined to work to eliminate discrimination against and poverty among the disabled.

About 350 participants adopted the resolution which stresses that disabled persons can live a decent life only in times of peace and that war is the worst in human behavior which kills many people and creates many disabled people. The resolution states that Shozenkyo will keep doing its utmost to build a society where no one is forced to endure poverty, discrimination, or loss of human dignity because of their disabilities.

Nakauchi Yoshishige, who heads the organization, in his speech said that since Shozenkyo was founded in 1967, its members have been tenaciously campaigning on various issues and succeeded in making the voices of the disabled heard by governments at both the local and national levels. Nakauchi stated that the Abe government is seeking to turn Japan into a war-fighting nation in defiance of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. He went on to say that the government is slashing public welfare services in disregard of Article 25 that guarantees the right to live. Nakauchi called on the participants to work to block Abe’s attempt to revise the Constitution in order to protect the disabled people’s human rights.

Members of the organization on the following day petitioned government ministries in the Diet building. They demanded a better education environment for children with special needs, government measures to ensure disabled persons’ full participation in politics, and improvements in welfare policies for the disabled.

In the petition to Welfare Ministry officials, a man in a wheelchair said that low-income families with disabled members are exempted from paying nursing-care service fees but that he is not eligible for the program because the sum of his pension benefits and his wife’s wage exceeds the income threshold for applying for the program. Saying that his pension benefit is very slim, the man stressed that the maximum eligible income should be set on an individual basis instead of on a household basis.

In the same meeting, the petitioners opposed an Abe government plan to utilize more community volunteers to provide care services to disabled persons, saying that care services should be given by professionally trained paid workers.


Past related articles:
> 80% of disabled persons live below poverty line: civil group data [May 26 & 29, 2016]
> Discrimination against the disabled must be overcome [July 29, 2016]