Beijing 2008

[Liz1949]

I just thought anyone with any interest at all in what I can loosely (and rather rudely, but unfortunately I can't think of any other general term) term 'sport for the disabled' might want to know that the Olympic manual for volunteers in Beijing is peppered with patronising comments about the disabled, noting for example that physically disabled people are "often" mentally healthy.

China's treatment of the disabled has in the past angered swimming great Dawn Fraser, who cited it as one reason she won't be going to Beijing.

She said in April she had seen disabled athletes spat on in the streets in Beijing during university games in the mid-1990s.

It seems that things have not changed very much since then.
"China sets gold standard in offending disabled"
http://www.smh.com.au/news/beijing2...ending-disabled/2008/05/26/1211653930152.html

 

[Midori]

The Chinese are very superstitious people, and they believe disability is due to the anger of the Gods, which is why diabled folk get a raw deal there.

When I was nursing, I was laying out a deceased patient with a Chinese Student nurse, and she was frighterned to touch the body in case it affected her unborn child, (she was pregnant). She really believed that the spirit of the dead person would try to inhabit her baby!

Cheers, Midori

 

[Liz1949]

When I lived in Australia I knew, and worked with, heaps of Chinese people; some were superstitious, some were not.

However, what I think is shocking here is the apparent open acceptance, at the highest levels of administration of the largest and most public international event that China and the world has even known, of ancient, irrational prejudices which are - or should be! - totally unacceptable in today's world.