“You must have confidence in yourself to earn respect from others,” a physically challenged woman who asked to be called Anna said at a forum on employees with disabilities in Taipei yesterday.
Anna has been crippled since she was a kid because of polio, but her disability has not kept her from leading a successful career at an international bank for the past 19 years.
“Of course I was worried about discrimination when I graduated from school and first entered the job market,” she said.
Anna said that when she was young, she was not allowed to attend kindergarten “because all the kindergartens thought it would be very difficult to take care of a crippled child and refused to take me.”
When she started elementary school, “all classmates looked at me as if I was a freak,” she said.
However, Anna said she soon impressed her classmates with her outstanding academic performance.
“A while later, my classmates began to want to be friends with me and study with me,” she said.
Fortunately, Anna said, she has not run into serious discrimination at work. Instead, her hard work has won praise from her employers.
“Physically challenged people may have some disabilities, but that wouldn’t prevent them from doing their job well,” said Jerry Fan (范可欽), head of an advertising company, and a handicapped person himself.
“If you hire a handicapped employee, he or she may then be able to feed his or her family, and a large part of our social welfare resources can be saved that way,” Fan said.
The life story of guest speaker Monthian Buntan was another inspiring example.
Buntan was born in a rural village in Thailand and has been blind since birth.
Despite his disability, Buntan earned a college degree in English in Thailand and a master’s degree in music in the US.
He moved on to become a leader in the campaign for rights for people with physical disabilities, and was also elected a member in the Upper House of the Thai parliament.
Buntan said he believed that the physically challenged need an equal footing, not sympathy.
“The charity-based society still exists in most countries in the world,” Buntan said in his address. “However, a charity-based society only views the handicapped as people with ‘problems,’ and tries to cure or help them based on sympathy.”
“In such a society, it’s not possible to have a total accessible environment for the physically challenged,” he said.
The handicapped, Buntan said, should be regarded as normal members of the public.
“‘Physically challenged’ doesn’t mean they’re incapable of doing things,” said Huang Cho-sung (黃琢嵩), executive director of the Eden Social Welfare Foundation.
“Businesses should provide them with employment opportunities, so that they, instead of becoming burdens on society, can contribute to it like everybody else,” Huang said.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty