Catholic News 2

Tokyo, Japan, Sep 13, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In late July, the worst mass killing in Japan since World War II left 19 people dead and 26 people wounded.

The suspected killer, 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu, carried out his attack against people with disabilities at a care center, where Uematsu had worked for four years. According to a Japanese news source, Uematsu had warned Parliament in February that he was planning such an attack, to get rid of disabled people “for the sake of Japan.”

In a way, the reaction to his attack showed that the country, and much of the world, would already like to pretend that the disabled do not exist.

Weeks after the incident, police in the Kanagawa Prefecture, where the attack took place, have not released the names of the victims, citing family members requests for privacy.

“Such nondisclosure is unusual,” Motoko Rich wrote in an article for the New York Times.

“In other rare instances of mass killings in Japan, like the stabbings of five elderly victims on Awaji Island, south of Kobe, last year, or a knifing attack in 2008 that left seven dead in the Akihabara neighborhood of Tokyo, the police identified the victims within days,” she wrote.  

“Advocates for disabled people say withholding the names is consistent with a culture that considers them lesser beings. Keeping the victims hidden, even after their deaths, these advocates say, tacitly endorses the views of those – including the assailant – who say disabled people should be kept separate from the rest of society,” she added.

But the problem goes beyond Japan, said Lydia Brown, an author, speaker and advocate for the disabled, who also has autism.

“The...victims have been mostly ignored or quickly shuffled through the news cycle in all world media, both within and outside Japan,” Brown told CNA in e-mail comments.

“Ableism (discrimination in favor of the able-bodied) and related shame, stigma, and dehumanization of disabled people is widespread in East Asian cultures, but is also equally prevalent in Western and other societies as well.”

An example of this discrimination is the way Western media treats the stories of disabled people who are murdered by their family or caretakers, Brown said.

“...our own media narratives typically paint such incidents as 'understandable' due to the 'stress' or 'burden' of supporting a disabled person,” Brown said.

“Additionally, popular and news media too frequently glorify our suicides as brave and courageous, vilify us as deranged serial killers and threats to public safety, and justify violence committed against us as understandable. That needs to change.”

Recently, disability rights groups and advocates have been particularly outspoken about the dangers of legislation that would legalize assisted suicide, warning that such laws would further marginalize the disabled and terminally ill. They warn that there are not enough safeguards to protect already vulnerable populations from murder at the hands of family members or caregivers.

Brown said that people with disabilities throughout the world have also been fighting for years against discrimination and violence, which comes in the form of assuming disabled people cannot make decisions for themselves, as well as in the overuse of institutions to keep disabled people “contained.”

“Part of that violence is the widespread use of institutions – from psychiatric wards to segregated special education schools to developmental disability institutions to nursing homes – to contain and isolate disabled people from the rest of society, creating a perfect environment for abuse and violence to proliferate unchecked,” Brown said.

“We must fight for liberation of all our people – from all institutions and prisons.”

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Budapest, Hungary, Sep 13, 2016 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Hungarian government has established a new office on the persecution of Christians to address both persecutions of Christians in the Middle East and the subtle forms of discrimination some Christians face in Europe.

Zoltan Balog, the Hungarian Minister for Human Capacities, explained the new office. His ministry oversees the newly established sub-secretariat on the persecution of Christians.

“Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion, where out of five people killed out of religious reasons, four of them are Christians,” Balog told CNA. “In 81 countries around the world Christians are persecuted and 200 million Christians live in areas where they are discriminated against. Millions of Christian lives are threatened by followers of radical religious ideologies.”
 
This is the reason why the Hungarian government considers the establishment of the specialized government office to be of the “utmost importance” to help persecuted Christians, to raise international awareness of their “untenable situation”, and to coordinate humanitarian actions.

The new office’s exact mission has not yet been established. It has primarily a humanitarian focus, but it will also examine the state of Christianity in Europe.

“Our interest not only lies in the Middle East but in forms of discrimination and persecution of Christians all over the world,” Balog said. “It is therefore to be expected that we will keep a vigilant eye on the more subtle forms of persecutions within European borders.”

A November 2014 report by the international pastoral charity Aid to the Church in Need found “worrying” and “worsening” religious freedom conditions in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and the Netherlands. These threats mainly come from radical feminists and LGBT activists that aim to compel Christian participation in abortion or to silence Christians on matters of sexual morality. Some policies have affected Christians’ ability to raise their children in the faith, while there have also been rising attacks on Christian places of worship in some European countries.
 
The Hungarian government is the first country to establish a special government department on persecution of Christians. The new department has a 3 million euro budget. Overseeing the department is Tamás Török, who until recently was Hungary's deputy ambassador to Italy.

The decision came after Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban along with Balog took part in the annual meeting for Catholic legislators in Frascati, Italy. The group was founded by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna in 2015.

Orban and Balog, who are respectively a Protestant layman and a Calvinist pastor, were the only non-Catholic members of the group, whom Pope Francis received in a private audience.
 
Balog said that he and Orban met with Christian leaders from the Middle East in Rome at the end of August.

Among the participants of the meeting were Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch, Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai of Antioch, Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and Bishop Anba Gabriel of the Coptic Orthodox Church.
 
“The primary topic of the meeting was the persecution of Christians, since Christians living the Middle Eastern region are the most vulnerable in the world,” Balog said. “Viktor Orbán declared at the meeting that Hungary will take action against the persecution of Christians and stands ready to support these communities whose very existence is threatened.”

“This is where we decided that there needs to be an efficiently operating deputy state secretariat with the government’s authorization to combat every form of Christian persecution.”

Balog said Hungary “hasn’t been idle” in speaking in international forums against contemporary persecutions of Christians. The country “to the best of its abilities” has helped Middle Eastern Christian communities morally and financially “so that they may persevere in their homelands.”

Balog listed some Hungarian government initiatives for persecuted Christians. There is the allocation of over 300,000 euros through the Hungarian Catholic Bishops’ Conference to support students in the Middle East and to construct schools in Erbil. The funding provided by the government helps fund the annual education of approximately 400 refugee children in the Middle East. The coverage, together with the Catholic Church, of the annual education costs for the children of almost 740 families belonging to Christian or other persecuted religious or ethnic minority living in the refugee camps in Jordan, northern Iraq, and Lebanon.
 
He added that the government “will do everything in our power to improve the circumstances of Christians living in the Middle Eastern region.”

“The establishment of this new government office, whose very nature is to deal with this matter, is another manifestation of our dedication to this issue.”
 
Balog also said that this new focus will help control the major immigration flows out of the Middle East into Europe.

“We feel that improving the situation in the troubled countries might make it possible for persecuted minorities to stay at home or close to home.”

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