Filipinos with disabilities continue to suffer from discriminatory acts. I have in the past written about banks that have turned away blind customers and rejected their applications to open accounts. In another case, Cebu Pacific asked 10 deaf passengers to disembark on a flight to Boracay after they were already seated inside the plane. They had to be properly accompanied in order to be treated as ?regular passengers.? The irony was that many members of the group were foreigners who had flown all the way to Manila without any hitch?and without being required to be properly accompanied. Worse, it took so much following up before they got their refund, and they didn?t even get the full amount. (Cebu Pacific has since rectified the policy and now accepts ?unescorted deaf guests? after they had been briefed by the cabin attendants.)

Recently I learned about a similar incident in November 2008 involving Cathay Pacific. Farida Jane Tiongson bought a ticket to join her friends on vacation in Hong Kong. Just like the Cebu Pacific case, she apprised the airline that she moved on a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury which paralyzed both her lower extremities. Farida asked if the airline would require a medical certificate, and apparently none was required. She didn?t get to join her friends in Hong Kong, because she was a full-time wheelchair user and was traveling alone. What makes this even more outrageous is that until today, nine months after the incident, she still hasn?t received her refund!

The Philippines has now ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Irony of ironies, when that convention was being drafted, one of the Philippine delegates, Lauro Purcil, who is blind, was refused a ticket by the Philippine Airlines because he was traveling alone. I know Ka Lauro personally, and I am aware that he is in fact able to travel on his own.

One court case has actually arisen under the Magna Carta for Disabled Persons. This law was sponsored by the lawyer and columnist Art Borjal while he was still a sectoral representative. In an October 2007 incident, a woman flying from Dumaguete to Manila on Cebu Pacific was almost denied boarding because she was on a wheelchair and thus ?Unfit to Travel Unaccompanied,? until barely 10 minutes before take-off when a kind hearted fellow passenger, a balikbayan, volunteered to be technically her ?traveling companion.? The whole time, she had to reason with staff to let her board, told them she was willing to submit to medical tests to show that she was not ill, merely handicapped, and that her illness wasn?t infectious. Her neurologist at the Silliman Medical Center even filled out a medical certification, which the staff then faxed to their offices in Manila for guidance. At that stage, she had signed all the waivers that the airline had offered, clearing them of any liability. Finally, when she said that she would just get a refund and fly on another airline, she was aghast to learn that she wouldn?t get the full amount and that there would be some deductions in the refund.

The good thing about the Dumaguete incident is that the victim, Katrina Segundo-Casino, actually filed a case. The sad thing, however, is that the prosecutors dismissed her case based on a narrow and misguided reading of the Magna Carta, saying there was no actual discrimination because the complainant was, in the end, allowed to board the plane.

The mischief sought to be avoided by the law?and punished in this case?is discrimination. The pain of discrimination is not just in being excluded from the airplane. There is pain as well in the anxiety in being unsure that maybe, you won?t be allowed to board. There is pain as well in your plans being left hanging, and you having to argue each time you have to travel, in planning a joyful holiday with friends (or in Katrina?s case, speaking at a book-launching in Manila) and, to do so, to have to brace yourself for one good round of arguments each time you show up at the airport. There is pain in having virtually to beg to enjoy what you have paid for, or to be able to enjoy it only by the charity of others.

The point of the whole Magna Carta and of disability rights, in general, is that these are rights, claims demandable and enforceable by law, not privileges to be given at the mercy of bureaucrats, not iffy benefits that can be withheld at the whim of the clerk manning the front desk, and certainly not an afterthought, a token concession or freebie given out of mercy or noblesse oblige.

Some people say that disability rights are more respected in the West because they have a more developed sense of ?rights? to start with. That may be so, but I think in Asian cultures, there is a Darwinistic attitude that tends to leave every vulnerable group to the mercy of the market. On top of that, some religions foster a fatalistic resignation to life?s misfortunes that disable us from taking charge of challenges.

That is why it is important to adopt a rights-based approach to the protection of persons with disabilities. It is not a plea for pity or an appeal to feeling. I will not tire of pointing out that this should be a cause for everyone because in a very real, mortal sense, we are all only temporarily-abled. The robust and healthy will inevitably age and grow infirm and inexorably decline, as their eyes dim, their hearing fades, their knees corrode. As John Rawls proposed, define the rules behind a ?veil of ignorance,? not knowing whether in that world you would be abled or disabled. Only thus can you be truly just.

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