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October 9, 1999

Human Dignity

Several weeks ago, Tokyo Metropolitan Governor, Shintato Ishihara looked at a disease patient who can not react by himself. And then, Ishihara asked "Does the patient have his own personality?". He seemed to think that such patient doesn't have their personality.
We are not sure whether what he really wanted to say was exactly the same as what he said. However, he seems to look down on such patients.
Some of us are socially weak, because of such disease or disabilities or social reasons. Needless to say, we have to respect each person's dignity even though the person is socially weak.
At the discussion, we exchanged our opinions on how to keep socially-weak person's dignity.

QUESTION1
Who is socially weak person?

OPINIONS

Low-income People
Disable People
In some cases, they are restricted their ability to do something (e.g. to go to somewhere by himself). We should improve our social infrastructure so that they can do anything more easily.
(Please see the following "Facilities for Disable Persons".)
Children Abused from Their Parents
Basically, children can not do anything against their parents. Such situation may cause abuse in some cases. And it is difficult for our society to find such abuse or domestic violence. It can be easily concealed, since such problem is private matter in a sense. However, we should keep children from being abused or being victims of domestic violence.
Homeless
Homeless is the person who can not spend socially-satisfied life currently. In a sense, they are weak. Some of them became homeless intentionally, and or they were forced to be homeless. We have to support them regardless of the reasons why they became homeless. However, "support" should not be "to feed them easily". We have to help them to get their jobs and homes.
Women
Some women restricted the ability in business world. some women who has enough ability to do job can not do the job because of social regulations.
Not-Brave Person
In our society, we are all guaranteed to do anything. Disable people are not weaker, but just loser. Weaker means the person who doesn't have Guts to do something he wants.
Retired Person

"Facilities for Disable Persons"
Several yeas ago, facilities for disable persons were very poor. There are quite a few schools which has such facilities. Because of facility problem, some schools rejected those disable students to enter the school. So, they did not have enough choice to select a school. But, recently, the situation has been improved. We should improve this situation further more.

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