NEWS: The Law Has Been Instrument of Our Oppression, Says Disability Advocate
People with psychosocial disabilities have been quick to embrace the international Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). One of them is David Stolper, a South African advocate for the human rights of people with psychosocial disabilities.
Stolper, says, “The whole world looks at our constitution in South Africa and sees it as the most progressive one for the rights of all people, but we in mental health have been totally marginalized.” Stolper, who has been institutionalized in both the United Kingdom and also in South Africa, terms himself a “psychiatric survivor.”
Of the CRPD, he says, “I think it gives us a legal framework and something on paper that will be binding that is a dramatic shift from what we have had before. There has always seemed to be some kind of barbaric tool to control us. The law has been an instrument of our oppression. The convention says that it is time that the government and people around us drop this notion that we cannot think for ourselves.”
We Can Do readers can read a full-length interview with David Stolper about his perspectives on the CRPD at the web site for the Secretariat of the African Decade of Persons with Disabilities:
http://www.africandecade.org/reads/articles/legalcapacityarticle/view
The interview also was published in the newsletter Human Rights Africa, 2007, Issue 2 (PDF format, 1.8 Mb). Human Rights Africa focuses on issues relevant to human rights for persons with disabilities in Africa.
Past issues of Human Rights Africa are available in both English and French in both PDF and Word format at:
http://www.africandecade.org/humanrightsafrica
We Can Do learned of this article through the Disabled People International (DPI) newsletter.
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DS is currently in a lock-up ward, because the system doesn’t know how to deal with him. He reckons he is being targetted as a result of statements he made to the African Decade and for the above article. To put it bluntly, he is not a free man and his situation is not unique.
davidrobertlewis
6 November 2008