“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.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu (楊智伃) and Legislator Hsieh Lung-chieh (謝龍介) would be summoned by police for questioning for leading an illegal assembly on Thursday evening last week, Minister of the Interior Liu Shyh-fang (劉世芳) said today. The three KMT officials led an assembly outside the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office, a restricted area where public assembly is not allowed, protesting the questioning of several KMT staff and searches of KMT headquarters and offices in a recall petition forgery case. Chu, Yang and Hsieh are all suspected of contravening the Assembly and Parade Act (集會遊行法) by holding
PRAISE: Japanese visitor Takashi Kubota said the Taiwanese temple architecture images showcased in the AI Art Gallery were the most impressive displays he saw Taiwan does not have an official pavilion at the World Expo in Osaka, Japan, because of its diplomatic predicament, but the government-backed Tech World pavilion is drawing interest with its unique recreations of works by Taiwanese artists. The pavilion features an artificial intelligence (AI)-based art gallery showcasing works of famous Taiwanese artists from the Japanese colonial period using innovative technologies. Among its main simulated displays are Eastern gouache paintings by Chen Chin (陳進), Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Kuo Hsueh-hu (郭雪湖), who were the three young Taiwanese painters selected for the East Asian Painting exhibition in 1927. Gouache is a water-based
Taiwan would welcome the return of Honduras as a diplomatic ally if its next president decides to make such a move, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said yesterday. “Of course, we would welcome Honduras if they want to restore diplomatic ties with Taiwan after their elections,” Lin said at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, when asked to comment on statements made by two of the three Honduran presidential candidates during the presidential campaign in the Central American country. Taiwan is paying close attention to the region as a whole in the wake of a
OFF-TARGET: More than 30,000 participants were expected to take part in the Games next month, but only 6,550 foreign and 19,400 Taiwanese athletes have registered Taipei city councilors yesterday blasted the organizers of next month’s World Masters Games over sudden timetable and venue changes, which they said have caused thousands of participants to back out of the international sporting event, among other organizational issues. They also cited visa delays and political interference by China as reasons many foreign athletes are requesting refunds for the event, to be held from May 17 to 30. Jointly organized by the Taipei and New Taipei City governments, the games have been rocked by numerous controversies since preparations began in 2020. Taipei City Councilor Lin Yen-feng (林延鳳) said yesterday that new measures by