Empowering the disabled

Thursday June 5, 2008

Empowering the disabled

Wheel Power
By ANTHONY THANASAYAN

The wheelchair-bound learn the art of self-defence.

ABOUT 50 disabled persons took part in a most unusual workshop in Kuala Lumpur a fortnight ago. The majority of the participants – in wheelchairs and some with artificial limbs – who turned up at the Commonwealth Hall in Bukit Jalil where the event was held began their first session by punching each other and learning to fall off their wheelchairs.

“It was one of the wildest moments that I had ever experienced,” said a gleeful Gurdip Kaur – better known as Rina – to Wheel Power last week.

“When our members enrolled to participate in the self-defence workshop, we had no idea how it was going to be conducted,” confessed Rina, from the Independent Living and Training Centre (ILTC) in Rawang, Selangor.

“Although the four-day workshop sessions from May 20 to 23 left us with aching bodies in the end, it was all worth it,” she said, beaming from ear to ear.

Rina, who also serves as the secretary for the ILTC, added that what made the workshop even more interesting was the fact that it was conducted by a woman in a wheelchair herself.

The person in question was Lydia La Riviere Zijdel. She is an educational trainer on violence against disabled people from the Netherlands.

According to Rina, the Dutch expert became a paraplegic after she met with a car accident in 1982. She also uses a hearing aid owing to a chronic infection that she has.

Nearing 60 years of age, Lydia has black belts in three self-defence arts: Aikido, Karate and Shuri-Ryu.

The eight-hour workshop that started at 10am was organised by the National Sports Council of Malaysia.

Even though it was specifically a self-defence workshop for girls and women with disabilities, handicapped men were also among the participants.

The sessions began with participants forming a circle. Each was asked to introduce themselves.

According to Rina, some were shy and did not say much because of the language barrier. Fortunately, Lydia had a Bahasa Malaysia translator on hand.

“We were first asked to box one another gently,” said Rina, who has been using a wheelchair for 15 years following a fall from a two-storey building.

“Then we were asked to shout out as we executed each physical action that we had been taught,” Rina went on.

The disabled participants were showed how they could effectively break out of a position if they were attacked from behind with an elbow lock to their neck.

“We were taught how to put our arms around our attacker’s neck. Doing so will inevitably cause us to be separated from our wheelchairs.

“However, we were instructed to hold on tight to our assailant and then deal a sharp blow with our elbows to his chest.

“This will at once release his grip on us,” Rina explained.

The participants were also given numerous demonstrations on a variety of other “attack” actions and how to counter them in their wheelchairs.

One of them was how to break the steely grip of someone grabbing their wrists.

Pillows were brought in to encourage disabled persons to use their fists to protect themselves.

When they were not fighting, they were separated into smaller groups to solve problems through simulated sessions.

One of the sessions was what to do if your car breaks down on a lonely road. (A good answer is to prevent such a thing from happening in the first place by always ensuring that their vehicles are properly maintained.)

Other situations include how to make complaints effectively, for example, if a supermarket tried to make disabled patrons enter through the back instead of using the front entrance.

“All in all, the entire workshop was not only absorbing all the way but also extremely empowering for disabled persons,” said Rina.

“The lack of disabled-friendly facilities and support systems in our society make us vulnerable, especially as women with handicaps.

“Even the building where the workshop was conducted had a four-inch step to the toilet which made things unnecessarily difficult for us,” she added.

“Some of the volunteers who were available were also not properly trained in handling wheelchairs, which was frustrating.”

However, Rina said that the the workshop was good in that disabled people had the chance to meet others like themselves and that each participant was given a daily allowance of RM70 per day during the workshop.

“With public transportation still not conducive for disabled Malaysians, this helped a lot by at least making it possible for them to attend the event,” she concluded.

According to Rina, Lydia will be back in November to conduct more sessions.

For further information, contact the ILTC (03-6093 6292) or e-mail iltcmalaysia@gmail.com.

(Pictures courtesy of the ILTC)