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Scottish group calls for 2012 boycott
Ian Macrae
The Scottish disabled people’s anti-cuts group, Black Triangle is calling for a boycott of the 2012 Paralympic Games
The boycott call was timed to coincide with the recent Paralympic Day held in London’s Trafalgar Square and is in protest at the sponsorship of the Paralympics by ATOS, the company currently carrying out assessments of disabled people for their fitness to work and entitlement to move from Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance.
John McArdle of Black Triangle told Disability Now: “We find it insulting to disabled people that ATOS is sponsoring the Paralympics.
“There’s a massive miscarriage of civil justice going on in this country. That’s proved by the fact that 40% of appellants to tribunals are having assessment decisions overturned.
“Hundreds of thousands of disabled people are going to be deprived of benefits and may have to wait up to ten months for them to be reinstated.
“There’ve been documented cases of suicide and other cases where people have had to go through the process three times and have died while waiting for tribunals to be heard.
“It’s totally unacceptable that the firm that’s contracted to do this is sponsoring the Paralympics. They’re not disabled people, they’re the oppressors of disabled people.”
Black Triangle also intend to lobby Paralympic athletes in an attempt to get them to boycott the Games.
Responding to the possibility that quitting the Games may present Paralympians with personal and professional difficulties, McArdle said: “It’s up to the individual conscience of athletes. But if people are facing destitution, we say this is really an issue where people should take a stand and say no to ATOS.”
Craig Spence, press spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee said that the division of ATOS with which they worked was not the one carrying out the benefit assessments.
“We work with the computer side of ATOS. The issue of ATOS and boycotting is to do with ATOS Healthcare. “People shouldn’t boycott what will be the best Paralympic Games ever over the fact that one of our sponsors has been employed by the British Government to provide a service.”
In a statement to Disability Now, a spokesperson for the British Paralympic Association said they were keeping a watching brief.
“We have not been contacted about the boycott you mention but our position on this is that we are aware that ATOS’s involvement with the DWP is drawing a lot of attention at the moment. We are continuing to monitor the situation closely.”
Meanwhile, John McArdle said that there might well be direct action aimed at disrupting the Games.
“We’re not just going to take this lying down and roll over and die. Our objective is to raise the issue nationally. I can well imagine that there’ll be direct action at the Games. Disabled people are not going to sit by while this insult to their dignity as human beings is ongoing.”
Boycott
I had said: “It’s up to the individual conscience of athletes. But if people are facing destitution, we say this is really an issue where people should take a stand and say no to ATOS.”
So who's FORCING anyone?
We are asking people to take a stand on an issue that has already been shown to be a matter of life and death.
Many have taken their own lives in despair.
The injustices heaped up and perpetrated on disabled people by Atos/DWPis nothing short of a latter day pogrom. This is now an irrefutable fact!
It is rather you who should be ashamed for not committing yourself to stand up and be counted.
We are not compelling you or anyone else to do that which they do not wish to do, unlike this rogue company working as an emanation of the state that has the power to make disabled people destitute and indeed does so regularly, on a daily basis!
So please, I think it is you who "doth protest too much"!
As Desmond Tutu said: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor".
The participants have EVERY "chance to weigh up the personal impact protesting would make on them" and their consciences.
That is a matter for them.
What our consciences compel us to do is to call for this boycott.
Atos must withdraw now! From the games AND the DWP WCA contract.
This pogrom must end NOW!
"THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"
Solidarity!
John McArdle
for
Black Triangle
Anti-Defamation Campaign
In Defence of Disability Rights
Games boycott
What Black Triangle are calling for may make an impact on the government and could go some way to having a favourable effect on them considering the problems in services and cuts. However it is likey to have a far greater affect on the athletes who will lose out on competing. It seems totally unfair to protest in a way which puts all the responsibility and negetive impact of protesting on one very small group of disabled people who may or may not feel angry at what is happening.
If disabled people feel the need to protest, individuals and groups should be given the choice about whether and how to do this, not forced into it, and should be given the chance to weigh up the personal impact protesting would make on them.
Althethes should not be forced into protesting and possibly their carrers colapsing, just because other people, whose carreers won't even be affected, want them to. Black Triangle, supposedly supporting disabled people, should be ashamed of pushing those same people in this kind of situation.