Column: Point of View
Shingo Kuzutani
Photographer for Asahi Shimbun Newspaper, Japan
FESPIC - In Pursuit of the Ideal
I witnessed a scene that was still deeply engraved on my mind at the Far East and South Pacific Games for the Disabled (FESPIC), a sports festival for disabled persons of Asia and Ocean held in Bangkok in January 1999, where I was dispatched as a photo staff.
In the men's 200-m race, a Nepalese athlete was moving up behind an athlete, who was wearing an artificial leg made of carbon costed at least half a million yen. I was surprised when my telephoto viewfinder caught him in full. He was hopping on one leg, barefooted, with a cane.
Such a sight could not have been seen at the Paralympics, in which participants are first-class athletes only. I found that the Nepalese athlete made the cane out of the hardest tree on a hill behind his village because he could not afford an artificial leg for competition. Nonetheless, the local media of Thailand focused mostly on the medal winners among top-ranking athletes. No newspaper or television station covered such athletes as that Nepalese runner.
The FESPIC was started in 1975 by a group of rehabilitation and social welfare workers led by the late Dr. Yutaka Nakamura of Japan Sun Industries in Oita Prefecture. Their foremost aim is to "promote a better understanding of welfare of persons with disabilities in developing countries."
Late last year, when I was busy collecting news materials prior to the games, one sports official said, "In developing countries, there are many persons with disabilities who are far from enjoying sports, and I would like you to cover such persons." Therefore, just before the games, my colleagues and I visited persons with disabilities in different countries in Asia.
After the prolonged civil war, Cambodia was excited over its first participation in the FESPIC, but in Battambang in northwestern Cambodia, I came across many landmine victims who did not even know about the FESPIC.
At a local artificial leg center of the International Red Cross, a 33-year-old man was sweating hard while practicing walking with a new artificial leg. He stepped on a landmine last fall while gathering firewood in a forest. Unable to do the farming with only one leg, he had to leave his family in a remote village. "If I cannot work, my family cannot survive," he said. The wound caused by the abrasion from the new artificial limb was very raw.
It is said that across Cambodia approximately one hundred persons fall victim to landmines every month. Prosthetists and orthotists of the center were working without any holidays, saying, "We need to make as many as possible in a short time, rather than considering the quality of the material or performance."
As if buried in between high-rise buildings of Bangkok, an 18-year-old girl with Down's syndrome lived in a sunless shack in the slums crowded with tin roofs. She has never been to school. Her job is to keep rocking the cradle for babies her 62-year-old mother baby-sits, for their neighbors.
Her father, 64 years old, said in a choking voice, "What would become of her when we are gone and she is left all by herself?"
After witnessing the grave reality, I went to cover the FESPIC. There were athletes running along the tracks on racing wheelchairs worth 600,000 yen a unit, or athletes running with computer-controlled artificial legs etc. I received mixed feelings on the first day.
Children with disabilities, however, were cheering with sparkling eyes, saying, "It's unbelievable that disabled persons can compete like this." I felt somewhat relieved at their reactions.
An opportunity to cast light on persons with disabilities who are left behind in society - I would like the FESPIC Games to continue to offer that opportunities.
Asia and Pacific Journal on Disability
Vol. 2, No. 1, May 1999
Contributed by Mr. Tsuyoshi Takeda, Asahi Shimbum Newspaper
ISSN 1029-4414