What will it take?

Yesterday saw a complete and utter tragedy in Japan when a man decided to attack and slaughter nineteen severely disabled people in a care facility outside Tokyo for the despicable crime of - being disabled. That was it, they were disabled. A cowardly attack by what sounds like a disgruntled employee, perpetrated against people who were unable to defend themselves against his blows and slashes and murderous assault purely because, to his eyes, they were not worthy of life. He attacked and mutilated and killed at least nineteen people in a frenzied knife attack before going to a police station to hand himself in, allegedly stating as he did so: "It is better that disabled people disappear."

Why?

What was it about the disabled people living in this facility that he felt entitled him to snuff them out? Why did he decide that these people have no right to exist? What had these people done that was so terrible? Was it because they had been born in a less than 'perfect' body? Could it have been because he deemed them to be unable to function 'normally' in society? What gave him the right to play judge and jury and make that decision. We will probably never know.

But that's not all, there's more.

Earlier this year he wrote a letter to the Speaker of the lower house of Japan's parliament in which he said that he felt it would be better if all severely disabled people were, with the agreement of their families, euthanised if it was proven to be difficult for that person "to carry out household and social activities". There was no description given of what those activities might be or what differentiated a disabled person from a severely disabled person, just that these people, whoever they might be, were not worthy of life and should, therefore, die. He even volunteered to carry out the killings himself and detailed how he would accomplish this atrocity if given the opportunity.

As far as I am concerned this is just the tip of a hate filled iceberg. Society is in meltdown. Disabled people are being hurt, disabled people are being abused, disabled people are dying because of it. Disabled people are being targeted for no other reason than for just being who they are. This fear and hatred is prevalent from the lowest to the highest echelons of society and it's getting worse. Only this week there was a report in the press about a middle-aged businessman who, apparently, decided, that bullying a disabled person because he himself had been made to queue to use a toilet was all right. Earlier this year, Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump felt that it was acceptable to mock a disabled reporter because of their impairment without any obvious repercussions for his actions. In November 2015 it was reported that incidents of disability hate crime in the UK had increased by forty-one percent over the previous year. Name calling, harassment, physical and mental assault for no other reason than a person's medical condition. Well, in my opinion this is not right and cannot be allowed to continue. What will it take for the hatred to stop? What has happened to make society so against people who are not the same, people who are different in some way. People who are different because of an illness, injury or accident of birth. Something that is out of the control of the person that is being abused.

We need to show that we have had enough and that all this unwarranted hostility and intolerance has to stop. People should learn to respect diversity and value their fellow men and women for what and who they are, regardless of their abilities or disabilities. We all have a contribution we can make, no matter how large or how small, how monumental or seemingly insignificant it may be.

We must make sure we all put our collective feet down firmly and just say 'NO!'