Russia fails disabled population again
Banning Russian athletes from the Rio Paralympics was the right, indeed, the only decision to make following exposure of a massive and state-sponsored doping scandal.
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has gone boldly into territory where its big brother, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), feared to tread. The IOC’s own decision, to ignore the conclusions of the World Anti-Doping Agency and toss this hot potato over to individual sporting federations, has burned the committee’s reputation, and that of the Olympic movement.
For Russia’s 267 Paralympic contenders, it’s a lamentable end to years of high hopes. IPC president Sir Philip Craven put it best: “Tragically, this situation is not about athletes cheating a system, but about a state-run system that is cheating the athletes.”
Moscow’s reaction was predictably outraged, and the Russian Paralympic Committee is launching an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. But there is damning evidence to support the ban.
At the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Russian Paralympians won over three times as many medals as other contenders, results that stretch credulity. An independent investigation concluded that a “sample-swapping regime” rather than super-human efforts were responsible. It also named Para athletes linked with 35 “disappearing positive” samples from the Moscow laboratory.
The Paralympic ban is not only a blow for the athletes, but for the 13 million Russians — 9 per cent of the population — who are disabled across the vast country, for whom the Olympic torch served as a beacon of hope on a dim landscape of disadvantage.
In Soviet times, disability was considered shameful. The authorities refused to hold the Paralympics in Moscow when it hosted the 1980 Olympic Games, declaring that there were “no disabled people” in the Soviet Union.
That stigma and disregard for people with disabilities carried over to the post-Soviet 1990s, when people with mobility and health problems lived behind closed doors because the streets, shops and office buildings were too difficult to navigate.
Since then, Russia has signed on to a UN convention on rights of the disabled and passed a law to ensure an accessible environment and services for them, along with equal opportunity for employment.
But life is still an obstacle course for Russia’s disabled population and too many are still confined to their homes because of daily challenges and inadequate infrastructure. Some 80 per cent are reportedly unemployed, and poverty is rife. For the blind, there are few Braille signs, and people with sight problems are often injured while trying to travel on public transit.
The recent recession, led by plummeting oil prices, has brought cuts to the benefits of 500,000 disabled people, who must meet new benchmarks of ill health to qualify. Meanwhile, military spending has escalated by 7.5 per cent to $66.4 billion in 2015.
The disability cuts are only increasing pressure on state-run orphanages, where about 30 per cent of Russian children with disabilities are currently institutionalized, many because their parents cannot afford to care for them.
Creating accessibility and equal opportunity for Russia’s disabled will take years, even with the best of political will. Western countries, including Canada, are still wrestling with those challenges. Now, instead of denials, Russia should make sure that the hopes of millions of disabled people seeking inspiration from its Paralympic team will not be smothered at the starting gate when the next Games begin.
For Russia’s 267 Paralympic contenders, it’s a lamentable end to years of high hopes