BY Nurul Hasfi

Disability is a normal…(Dr. Lynn Rose)

The media is the most important institution that promotes the equal rights of persons with disabilities….(Dr. Nurul)

One of the ways to support the rights of those with disabilities is education…(Niyan)

International Women’s Day which was held on February 10, 2021 by Atensi.co, an NGO focused on digital media literacy, went smoothly and was attended by 200 participants. This event was hosted by Dyah Paramita SH, LL.M from the Center for Regulation Policy and Government (CRPG) based in Oman.

The first speaker, Dr. Lynn Rose, Professor of the American University of Iraq Sulaimani (AUIS), opened the webimar with her presentation on ‘Ableism, Disability, and Gender’ which explained how disabled women had a ‘double burden’ in society.

Dr. Lynn argued from a theoretical point of view that there were 8 social identities that became the objects of discrimination, namely ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, disability, culture, class and religion. Disability itself was discriminated in terms of sexism and ableism which in practice could take the form of rude comments, silent treatment, and discrimination in various sectors.

She also explained the problems of the medical model of disability, which saw the problems of difables from a medical perspective. This medical perspective had been criticized for seeing people with disabilities as abnormal. This view was countered by the social model of disability which no longer saw disability as a problem.

However, that did not mean that the problem was solved, because there were still barriers for persons with disabilities, namely the environment (limited access, services, buildings, language, etc.) and community attitudes (stereotype, prejudice, discrimination). Dr Lynn closed the discussion by promoting disability as a normal thing.

The next speaker, Dr. Nurul Hasfi from Mikom Undip specifically described discrimination against persons with disabilities by media institutions in her paper entitled ‘Representasi Penyandang Disabilitas di Media di Indonesia‘.

Dr. Nurul started her presentation with the fact that people with disabilities in Indonesia were in a social environment that did not support their existence, starting from the smallest environment of the family, society to the government.

Even though there had been the Law No. 8 of 2018 which guaranteed the equality of disability rights, its application still had many problems. Public facilities, for example, were still minimal, causing the disabled in Indonesia to be ‘exclusive’ because of their limited mobilization.

She believed that the media should be actively involved in solving the problems of persons with disabilities. However, in reality, many media behaviors actually perpetuated the existing discriminatory values ??and even constructed new stereotypes.

She gave examples of various practices of discrimination, stereotypes, bullying, exploitation of persons with disabilities in various media content ranging from news, soap operas, talk shows and reality shows.

One of the content that seemed positive with the theme of inspiring people with disabilities turned out to be practicing the concept of inspiration porn (Stella Young). The problem was that people with disabilities were seen as one-dimensional humans rather than humans who also had many problems.

The problem was, the concept of inspiration porn actually marginalized the essential issue, namely the limited access for people with disabilities to education, transportation, health, which actually needed to be addressed.

Although Dr. Nurul also highlighted that there were media that carried out good journalism on difable issues such as watchdoc, Jakarta post and Harian Kompas, this problem was not easy to be solved quickly.

The last speaker, Niyan Aziz S Mohamad from Halabja Disabled Organization (HDO) Iraq, explained the problem of people with disabilities in Iraq caused by the chemical weapons attack in Halabja.

In this area, there were more than 4000 people with disabilities who were handled by HDO where they got various supports such as education, family support, community awareness, etc.

She explained the problem of people with disabilities there. In 2019, HDO visited the homes of residents who had children with disabilities and conducted a survey. Most of them said that their children did not go to school because of the lack of facilities. Parents also feel that there was no need to send them to go to school because there was no guarantee of safety for their children.

Another problem was employment opportunities where the law that guaranteed employment opportunities for persons with disabilities did not work well in its practice. It was similar to what happened in Indonesia.

From the 3 presentations by the speakers, basically people with disabilities in the world had problems in similar areas such as access to public facilities, education, health and social problems such as stereotypes and verbal violence.