World View Round-up - October

Us home closure battle

Scores of disabled activists camped outside a nursing home in Philadelphia as part of a long struggle to force the city to close it down. The independent living campaign group ADAPT called for the home’s 450 residents to be moved into the community, describing it as a “cess pit” that warehoused people and alleging neglect and poor treatment of residents. There have been 66 inspections in the last five years (none, however, leading to decisive action). Protest leaders later claimed that the mayor had agreed to a closure, though this was denied.

Chinese still stalling on human rights

The Chinese authorities have ignored renewed calls to release the blind Chinese lawyer and human rights activist Chen Guangcheng.

Chen was sentenced to more than four years in prison in 2006. His wife is said to be under constant surveillance and unable to visit her husband.

Amnesty International said it had hoped China’s human rights record would improve in the run-up to the Olympics and Paralympics.

Former Paralympian Kristina Veasey backed its call for Chen’s release. “The Olympics were a fantastic showcase of sport and I’m sure the Paralympics will be the same, but we cannot allow ourselves to forget about what is happening away from the sporting arena in China,” she said.

UN rapporteur hits out at Arab record

Disabled people in the Arab world are “invisible” because of “negative social attitudes and the lack of a human rights culture”, the United Nation’s disability watchdog has said.

Sheikha Hissa Khalifa Al Thani was speaking out as she nears the end of her last year as the UN’s special rapporteur on disability.

She said she hoped the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities might see improvements, as most Arab governments have signed or ratified the convention. But she said this would mean nothing if politicians do not build the principles of the convention into law.

Korean 'disability purge' revealed

The leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, ordered the capital city of Pyongyang to be “purified” of its disabled residents in the late 1980s, according to an exiled North Korean academic.

Kim Hyun-sik, a professor at George Mason University in the US, has written a memoir in Foreign Policy magazine. He says the government also promoted a drug that it claimed would make short people taller. The shortest men and women were then sent to separate uninhabited islands and abandoned.