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EASTERN EUROPE: Disabled Seek to Move In From the Margins
By Claudia Ciobanu
BUCHAREST, Sep 17 (IPS) - At 37, Dimo Kokorkov, a carpenter from Stara Zagora in central Bulgaria is
"broken-hearted". Dimo says this to describe his sense of deep injustice after
being systematically abused in prison because of his disabilities.
Officially diagnosed as mentally disabled, Dimo suffers from frequent
headaches, nausea and loss of control over his body. According to him, his
problem has been caused by "the pain I endured during and since my prison
term."
Dimo received a 23-year prison sentence for theft. "After my mother
remarried, I was left on my own, I was poor, so I had to steal in order to eat,"
he told IPS. "I started doing the usual things, stealing copper and wires. I
know what I did was not right, but the sentence was extremely unfair."
Through his prison years, he started developing the symptoms he suffers
from now. They transformed him into a target of abuse and harassment by
other prisoners and prison staff.
Over the past year, while imprisoned in Bourgas, eastern Bulgaria, he began
seeking help from human rights organisations, which he contacted by mail
from prison. The harassment got worse, he told IPS, after the prison director
learnt that he had contacted human rights groups.
"The reason for the increased aggression, from inmates and staff, is that I
tried to ask for my rights," he says.
While in prison, Dimo started cutting himself and even sewed his mouth. "I
wanted to make them react - the medical staff, the prison chief, and the
whole judicial system." After his release this year, Dimo filed a lawsuit against
the Ministry of Justice, accusing the authorities of discrimination and failure
to ensure the rights of the incarcerated persons.
"All I want is justice", Dimo says.
The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), which provides him with legal
assistance in the case, sees the lawsuit as an attempt to address the issue of
mistreatment of people with disabilities incarcerated in Bulgarian prisons.
BHC, a non-governmental organisation for the protection of human rights
based in Sofia, is pursuing a strategy of adressing discrimination against
people with disabilities in the country through lawsuits. This is the strongest
tool in the hands of civil society groups working in Central and Eastern
Europe to change government policies and public attitudes.
All countries in Central and Eastern Europe have national legislation
protecting the rights of people with disabilities. Membership of the European
Union obliges them to adhere to yet another layer of legislation promoting
these rights. All countries in the region have also signed the United Nations
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. But implementation of
these legal norms is still deficient in most countries in the region.
A core change introduced by international legislation is to treat persons with
disabilities as fully autonomous and only needing assistance in order to
perform certain functions. This is a radical change for societies in Central and
Eastern Europe, and one to which they are slow to adjust.
In Bulgaria, says Aneta Genova, a lawyer with BHC, "people placed under
guardianship have no rights to decide anything in their lives, not even on the
food they eat in some cases."
Judges are quick to place people with disabilities under full guardianship,
effectively depriving them of all civil rights, without conducting proper
psychological evaluations of the needs of each person. According to Genova,
this practice is an expression of a general view in Bulgarian society that "there
is no hope for people with disabilities."
The most progressive country in the region is Hungary, which has introduced
provisions for various levels of partial guardianship in a new civil code
brought in last year.
According to an August 2008 report of the Budapest-based Mental
Disabilities Advocacy Centre (MDAC), the new Hungarian civil code gives
"persons under guardianship more rights to challenge the guardians'
decisions and more control over the guardian." Hungarian law now provides
for regular review of guardianship and the obligation of authorities to hear in
person from everyone subjected to the guardianship procedure.
The "no hope" mentality has its strongest negative impact on young children
diagnosed with disabilities, who are quickly placed in special institutions,
thus effectively segregated. This prevents their normal development, and
often condemns them to institutionalisation for life.
While these special institutions have been the target of media attention and
public condemnation for the last two decades, some still remain open, and
abuses continue to be reported.
A visit by members of the Romanian non-governmental group Centre for
Juridical Resources to the centre for recuperation for people with mental
disabilities in Bolintin-Vale in southern Romania brought to light a dramatic
reality.
"During our visit, which took place at about noon, we found all the patients in
the courtyard, half-dressed or naked, all with their hair cut very short
because of fear of infections," says Georgiana Pascu, programme manager
with the group. "They beds were not clean. And none of them was engaged in
any rehabilitation activity, even though Romanian legislation provides for
such activities to take place in the centres."
In Bulgaria, 75 deaths of children with disabilities placed under state care in
special institutions has still not been investigated. This is the subject of yet
another lawsuit filed by BHC against the General Prosecutor's Office.
"The practice of using restraints and cage beds for people detained in special
institutions remains widespread in the Czech Republic," says MDAC, which
supports local Czech groups in filing lawsuits to eliminate this practice.
But some good news is beginning to emerge. The number of children with
disabilities included in regular educational programmes is increasing.
Polish law requires all companies with more than 25 employees to hire
disabled people, even though "frequent changes in legislation and the
potential for various interpretations of the same law discourage employers
from hiring persons with disabilities," according to Monika Tykarska from the
Polish Organisation of Disabled People's Employers.
For now, progress seems slow and insufficient. But public attitudes in the
region are changing, with opinion polls in most countries showing people
increasingly open to live together and work with people with disabilities. And
this change is crucial, says Genova, the BHC lawyer.
"What we are really hoping for (with our cases) is a change in the attitude of
the Bulgarian community and authorities. In this way, prosecutors will make
better controls of the care given in institutions, and citizens will feel stronger
about asking from their politicians that proper care is given to people with
disabilities." (END/2009)
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