The Trouble with Trafficking

This post originally appeared on IOM's Migration Blog

The trouble with human trafficking is that with all the resources and thought that has been poured into the phenomenon over the years, no one really understands what’s going on. Not governments, not NGOs, not the police, not think tanks… no one apart from the people traffickers, who change their modus operandi  like the wind, in order to stay one step ahead.

That’s the tenet of a wide-ranging article which quotes IOM's Denis Nihill, on the  hanging nature of human trafficking.

"There's been a lot of work done on the Greater Mekong Region for many years on trafficking, but it's become more complex, as it's now inextricably woven with labour migration, which is a much more difficult nut to crack because it is less easy to detect than trafficking linked to the sex industry."

Nihill, who runs IOM's operations in Indonesia pointed to the difficulties of tackling internal trafficking, which IOM's 2011 counter trafficking report highlighted as particularly problematic in Indonesia.

"For cross border trafficking, people must pass through the hands of several government agencies, but internally trafficked people need not come to the attention of any officials, so in many ways it's a more alarming situation," he said.

UN OCHA’s humanitarian news service quotes several organizations, including IOM, in a wide-ranging piece.

IRIN’s article tells the harrowing story of Evi (not her real name) who in 2011, aged 16, left her remote village in Indonesia's Banten Province in the hope of making more money to help her family.

"My auntie introduced me to a broker who forged my travel documents so I could work," she said. "The broker then took me to a recruitment agency in Jakarta. I just wanted to earn more money. I thought God would protect me."

The agency arranged for Evi's travel to Jordan and placement as a domestic worker in Amman, but she soon found she was being exploited by her employer.

"I was allowed to sleep for about two hours a day, sometimes less," said Evi. "I had to take care of four children and clean the house. The mother and auntie of the children often beat me with sandals or punched me for no reason, and sometimes my nose bled."

In 2012, having endured physical abuse for over a year, her employer began to withhold her pay, and Evi attempted suicide by drinking a glass of kerosene.

"My employer found me unconscious and allowed me to rest, but the next day, they made me work again," she said.

Later, Evi ran away from her employer and roamed the streets of Amman looking for work until a local shopkeeper took her to a police station. Jordanian police then took her to the Indonesian Embassy, which arranged for her repatriation to a shelter for trafficked children in Jakarta, where she is recovering.

Cooperation between the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to tackle human trafficking has resulted in high-level initiatives and memorandums of understanding (MoUs), according to IRIN.

Martin Reeve, a UNODC regional adviser on trafficking in Bangkok, said law enforcement agencies across the region were still developing.

"Securing a human trafficking conviction is at the best of times a difficult process," he said. "Intelligence-led policing is immature or non-existent, so the offenders arrested are less likely to be those organizing the trafficking, and police-to-police cooperation remains weak."

All ASEAN governments are part of the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime, a non-binding, voluntary forum co-chaired by the governments of Indonesia and Australia, which began in 2002.

Febrian Ruddyard, director of international security and disarmament at the Indonesian Foreign Ministry, said the Process had only recently begun to address trafficking in persons because not all countries had strong national legislation in place.

To date, all ASEAN governments have passed anti-trafficking legislation with the exception of Laos and Singapore.

Indonesia and Australia have faced challenges in encouraging members of the Bali Process to take practical action to address human trafficking, Ruddyard said.

"Many member countries are interested in the Process but attracting funding from them [for projects] is difficult, not only because the issue is still a low priority in some countries but also because the Process is non-binding," he said.

Ruddyard cited last year's creation of a regional support office in Bangkok (facilitated by IOM) to implement practical arrangements to combat trafficking, and a plan to use the Jakarta Centre for Law Enforcement Cooperation in Indonesia to train law enforcers across the region to better deal with human trafficking cases, as achievements of the Process. (The training will be provided by IOM.)

Ahmed Sofian, national coordinator of ECPAT Indonesia, an NGO based in Jakarta working to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children, was interviewed by IRIN for its article. He said there was little effort made by local law enforcement officials in Indonesia to deal with trafficking.

"There are economic benefits for those living close to the brothels that children are trafficked to," said Sofian. "Locals will gravitate to the area to sell food or provide security, and local police officers – often on low salaries – will ask for protection money from the owners of the brothels."

"This is why it's so difficult to eliminate trafficking," Sofian went on. "There's a local economy that grows up around it, and if the local government attempts to close these brothels, the police will become angry."

Read also IRIN Asia's: Analysis: Southeast Asia’s human trafficking conundrum

Climate change in the Pacific - Clear and Present Danger

Water water everywhere... 

Climate change is disproportionately affecting the fragile ecosystem of the Pacific, with its hundreds of thousands of tiny islands, inhabited by ten million people whose traditions and customs go back millennia.

Although these people cause only some 0.03 per cent  of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, they are the first to suffer. The Pacific Regional Environment Programme, which represents Pacific heads of Government,  warns “most islands are experiencing climate change impacts on communities, infrastructure, water supply, coastal and forest ecosystems, fisheries, agriculture, and human health. The consequences of sea level rise, sea temperature increases, ocean acidification, altered rainfall patterns, and overall temperature rise will be increasingly felt.”

For the first time, IOM has mounted a relief operation for a drought in the Marshall Islands, a cluster of tiny Islands halfway between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea.

The islands have historic ties with the United States, and have benefitted from a rapid allocation of USD 100,000 to IOM from USAID. The money is coming in the nick of time, according to IOM’s Chief of Mission for the Marshall Islands (and Federated States of Micronesia) Ashley Carl.

“The assessment mission that we were part of reported back only last week, and already an international response to the Government-declared emergency has been launched,” he said.

“The situation is quite alarming. We found families rationed to only a gallon of drinking water per day, when the bare minimum recommended in emergency situations is twice that. And more than half the population of the Northern Islands are affected.”

The drought has been caused by unusually low rainfall across the  Republic of the Marshall Islands (population 52,558). Food security is a major concern, as crops, plants and trees have been damaged.

Government operated ships last week began transporting relief materials provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including full water containers and hygiene kits stocked in IOM-managed warehouses, to 567 households in the worst-affected communities. Reverse Osmosis units are being rushed to the affected areas.

But climate change is going beyond drought and is beginning to hurt the region’s fishing industry – one of the few sources of protein across the vast region.

In a recent study published by the journal Nature Climate Change, the Secretariat of the Pacific Community  and France’s Research of Development Institute IRD warned of the impact of global warming on food security on these islands.  Currently about one million tonnes of tuna and similar fish are caught every year in the region.

Infrastructure is also in clear and present danger. Radio New Zealand this week  carried  a report quoting the Marshall Island’s senior climate change advisor as warning that thee atoll of Ailinglaplap is eroding away. Three airstrips, roads, causeways and schools are said to be at risk.

Ailinglaplap is home to 1,700 people who live scattered on different islands in the atoll, which are about 30 to 90 centimetres above sea level.

Marshall Island Minister Tony De Brum made an impassioned and intelligent appeal for the world to pay attention to the plight of his beautiful homeland. In an editorial for the Thomson Reuters foundation he said:  “My country needs a precious gift from the world’s people – the vision to take bold, urgent action on climate change, and the will to follow it through. Only concerted action can protect us from the rising seas and lack of fresh water that now threaten my nation’s very existence.

“Climate change is not a distant prospect, but a reality for us now.  People are starting to ask:  What is happening to our country?  What will my children do?  Not our grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but our children, who are already on the frontline.

“In other countries, you can talk about climate change as something intangible whose  impacts will arrive in 50 years.  But if the world does not tackle climate change now, then my people will be displaced.  We will become strangers in a foreign land, having lost our national identity, our traditions and our very collective being.”

As many island nations can testify, when people start to move from their outlying islands, they almost never go back.

I wrote this piece for www.iom.int, the web site of the International Organization for Migration

Stabilizing Sri Lanka by investing in Livelihoods

I was recently sent to Northern Sri Lanka to cover the work that the International Organization for Migration is doing with the government of Sri Lanka and with international governments to help restore stability to the country after 30 years of conflict. The strongest needs are in the North and East of the country, which also suffered most in the tsunami of December 2004.

IOM works with communities to provide livelihood support – simply put, getting people back to work so they can feed, clothe and educate their families.

Many thousands of Sri Lankans, particularly in the Tamil north, have been displaced several times by conflict. In fact the world’s largest camp for internally displaced people, at Menik Farm, near Vavuniya, closed just last year. Hundreds of thousands of people have returned to their former homes, to a shattered economy and a climate of uncertainty. Against that backdrop IOM runs livelihood, infrastructure and shelter programmes.

“It is hugely important for us to continue to fund community development programmes across the island”, stresses Richard Danziger, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Sri Lanka from 2010 to 2013.

“Jobs and a sense of self-worth prevent tensions from spilling over. More than that, they keep communities together and prevent the exploitation of would-be migrants. And migrants or failed asylum seekers who are unsuccessful in remaining overseas need to know that there is a chance for them to have another shot at making it work back at home”.

Words and pics Joe Lowry for IOM. Click on any photo to go to a gallery of full-size pics. These pictures also appear on IOM's website. 

Infrastructure in Northern and Eastern Sri Lankan is in tatters following 30 years of conflict between the Government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers, or LTTE). IOM is one of several organisations assisting the Government and local communities to re-establish a sense of normalcy and recovery by supporting livelihood, infrastructure, shelter, and women-centred programmes.

Kahini Puvaneswary and Anesha Thayalini with the selection of biscuits, “short eats”, rolls and popcorn that they and other members of the Women’s Rural Development Society produces at their premises just outside the former Tamil Tiger capital of Killinochchi, with seed capital from IOM. Six women work at the small bakery, where they also learn book-keeping and other business skills.

A young customer at the bakery run by the Killinochchi Women’s Rural Development Society, which is assisted by IOM. 

Thamotharampillai Srikanthan and his wife Srikanthan endured a nine-month nightmare when they and hundreds of others took their family on an illicit and secretive trip to Benin, West Africa, with the promise of being shipped onward to Canada. The boat never arrived. Finally a group of men escaped from the semi-captivity and alerted IOM, who managed to repatriate the hundreds of people who had been smuggled. The couple now runs a successful timber company in Killinochchi, with financial support they received from IOM. 

Edward Roshan lost his barber shop during the war and with his wife, and two small children survived the nightmare final showdown. He was among the group of several thousand Tamils who were forced by the LTTE to follow them into the ever-smaller “fire free zones”, eventually ending up on the beach at Mullaitivu, scared witless with nowhere further to run. In 2012, with a grant from IOM, he was able to reopen Theepa Salon, on the spot where his previous business stood. He employed three of his friends as partners and they are doing a brisk business, from 7am to 9pm, six days a week.

Nadarasa Dilomena (23) married young to avoid being conscripted into the Tamil Tiger army. During the final phase of the war many families were required to give a child to fight for the LTTE. However, if girls got married they were exempted. "I was lucky, my marriage worked out and I have two lovely children,” she says. Her house is a prototype IOM design which has been approved as the only design for temporary houses by the Sri Lanka government. Also pictured are two-year-old Sanjeevan and Thayalini (6) 

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Much of the population of the fishing village of Passaiyoor, close to Jaffna in the North of Sri Lanka was displaced, up to four times, during the conflict. As the harbour was not being used it silted up and was unnavigable when the community returned. IOM, funded by the Australian Government, and with the support of the United Nations Office for Project Services and Hellenic Aid, have put USD500,000-worth of work into the harbour, dredging new channels for fishing boats, constructing a new pier and net-mending area. The project will be completed with a public park. 

Microsingam Thavapragasam (right) is the 81-year-old  President of St Anthony’s Fishermen’s Cooperative. He has been fishing in Passaiyoor all his life, except for the years when he was displaced by conflict. He is pictured here with the co-op’s Secretary, Gracian Demiyan.

“IOM gave various support to the society, says Microsingam. “When we were resettling (from displaced person’s camps) they gave us fishing nets to restart our livelihoods, which were also given to people who returned from India. And IOM supported our fishing society with office equipment, a computer and other things. Compared to other NGOs IOM does a lot for us.”

Business as usual. With support from IOM St Anthony’s Fishermen’s Cooperative, Passaiyoor, is successfully getting back to sea and retaking its rightful place as the life-blood of the community. 

The new pier wall constructed by IOM at Passaiyoor, where the Organization is assisting the local fishermen’s cooperative to get back to business. The pre-war pier is to the left. 

IOM-funded dredging works at Passaiyoor harbour. The new channels, pier and breakwater have allowed the fishing industry, crippled by the country’s 30-year-conflict, to flourish. 

Tents and Tarps are never enough

The article below is an interesting reminder that solidarity can only go so far, and that tents and blankets do not constitute a humanitarian response. It is timely: IOM's Director General Ambassador William Lacy Swing noted in The Foreign Service Journal last month that ÏOM focuses on assisting local authorities to make this host system sustainable through, among other measures, efforts to strengthen host-family resilience and keep them from becoming more vulnerable because of the resources they use for their guests. This approach is quite different form a typical shelter response involving tents and tarpaulins". The DG's article can be found in the March edition of The Foreign Service Journal. 

Influx of Syrian refugees raises tensions in Jordan as resources are stretched

Solidarity with northern neighbours wanes as Jordanian government says cost of hosting refugees could reach $1bn

• Taylor Luck for the Washington Post
• Guardian Weekly, Tuesday 23 April 2013 14.06 BST
• 
  
• • This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post

On the move: refugees fleeing Syria (photo CNN)

After months of shrugging off glares, Abdullah Saad could no longer ignore the feeling he was unwelcome in Jordan. The message was spray-painted in red on the side of his home for anyone to see: go back toSyria."

They once received us as guests and brothers," the 45-year-old Syrian said of Jordanians last week as he ran his hand over the words marking his rented concrete house in this border city. "Now they see us as a curse."

More than 500,000 Syrians have fled to Jordan since the onset of the civil war in their country more than two years ago, according to the Amman government and the United Nations – a figure equal to nearly one-10th of Jordan's population. While 160,000 arehoused in refugee camps, Saad and the vast majority have been living in cities, where their presence is stoking tensions with an increasingly resentful host community and posing what Jordanian officials call one of the greatest crises the country has faced in decades.

Jordanian government officials say the cost of hosting therapidly growing refugee population is expected to reach $1bn this year. Yet the true cost of hosting the refugees, who compete with Jordanians for jobs and limited housing, is far broader, according to economic experts.

The state-run Economic and Social Council says that, due to electricity and water subsidies, each Syrian who crosses into Jordan directly costs the government about $3,000 annually. The health ministry says it spends half of its budget on medical care for Syrians alone and needs around $350m in emergency funding to sustain the country's public healthcare system beyond this month.

According to the labour ministry, about 160,000 Syrians are working illegally in Jordan, accepting lower pay to fill positions in bakeries, garages and cafes in jobs once held by Jordanians, about 20% of whom are unemployed.

"You walk into a bakery, there are Syrians; you walk into a factory, there are Syrians," said Mohammed Mashagbeh, 35, a Jordanian carpenter who said he left Mafraq after losing work to Syrians and now lives in the capital, Amman, where he earns half his previous wages. "There is no longer room in Jordan for Jordanians."

The kingdomhas long served as an oasis for those displaced by the various wars that have racked the region, and it is home to more than 1.8 million Palestinian and 500,000 Iraqi refugees. Butunlike their Palestinian and Iraqi predecessors, the bulk of Syrians who have flooded Jordan hail from rural regions and are under-skilled and poorly educated, arriving with limited funds and placing an immediate burden on the government's social services, economic experts say.

"In many ways, while Iraqis came to Jordan with investments and were effectively job creators, Syrians are arriving as job-takers," says Jawad Anani, economist and president of the Economic and Social Council. Many Jordanian business owners dispute that, saying that Syrians take work that Jordanians do not want and that they work harder.

Syrian refugees, most of whom are not authorised to work in Jordan, say they are often left at the mercy of employers, forced to perform long hours of labour – sometimes back-breaking – for low salaries.

Khaled al-Awad, who fled the southern Syrian city of Daraa, and his brother said they lay bricks for up to 18 hours a day in Zarqa, in northern Jordan, for about one-third of what Jordanian workers make in similar jobs. "In Jordan, Syrians are seen as little more than slaves," Awad said, grimacing as he popped his eighth aspirin tablet of the day into his mouth. "But at the end of the day we have to feed our families."

The reception was not always like this. In the early days of the Syrian conflict, Jordanians launched fundraising drives, hosted makeshiftrefugee camps and opened their homes to their northern neighbours. But as the war drags on and Syrians increasingly put down roots in Jordan, the strain on resources has transformed the goodwill to hostility, said Ziyad al-Hamad, president of the Kitab al-Sunna Society, the largest Jordanian organisation providing aid to Syrians. "We have reached the point where nearly all of the country's problems are being blamed on Syrians," Hamad said.

The major flashpoint for tension is the Syrian community's effect on Jordan's housing sector, with average rents soaring as high as 300% over the past six months. Modest dwellings go for more than $300 in rent a month.

One reason for the rise in rents is the sharp increase in demand for housing, analysts say. Also, several Syrian families often rent houses together, pooling their resources, thereby being able to pay higher rents.

In the border city of Ramtha, 12 Jordanians were huddled on a rainy day last week in one of several "refugee camps" for Jordanians that have sprouted across the country in recent months – shantytowns erected by those who say they have been evicted in favour of Syrian tenants. At the Ramtha camp, residents reminisced about their former houses. Soon talk turned to vigilante-style reprisals against Syrians, a community they blamed for the country's economic woes.

"Syrians are taking our homes, our jobs and our livelihoods," Mohammed Theibat said as he stoked a coal grill in the centre of the canvas tent he has called home for more than a week. "If the government does not take action, we will take matters in our own hands." Such talk is sparking fears that Jordan's social tensions may soon escalate.

"There is already talk of violence, and with time we are afraid this is going to become a reality," Hamad said.

Although the growing stresses have not led to widespread violence, public anger is palpable in Jordan, with regular protests in border cities such as Mafraq that call on Amman to deport Syrian refugees.

Last month members of parliament floated a proposal to establish buffer zones in Syria and relocate the refugees. Prime minister Abdullah Ensour announced last month that the government is moving to declare the northern regions an "emergency area" to draw international attention to the plight facing Jordanian host communities.

In the meantime, rising tensions between Jordanians and Syrians have trickled down to the schoolyard. The influx of about 30,000 Syrian students has forced many of Jordan's schools to switch to abbreviated "two-shift" systems, rotating students in half-day sessions to ease stress on overcrowded and understaffed classrooms.

In a vacant lot behind a Mafraq school this month, three Syrian fourth-graders wrestled their Jordanian classmate to the ground, kicking up clouds of dust, their bright blue backpacks waving wildly in the air.

After shopkeeper Mohammed Hassan rushed to break up the latest in what local people say have become nearly daily scuffles, the students admitted to the source of the fight: they thought that their Jordanian classmate had chanted "Long live Bashar," a reference to the Syrian president.

"If our children cannot live together, how can we ever hope to do so?" Hassan asked, sighing as he wiped a smear of mud off the face of one of the children.

Dignity in Death for Lampedusa migrants

Anonymous graves of migrants who died off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy

This story just appeared on IOM Italy's website. A tragedy, to be sure, but some cold comfort that the gravestones will bear their names. I never thought about it before. The thousands of migrants who die trying to reach Europe (or the USA, or Australia) don't just lose their lives. IT'S AS IF THEY NEVER EXISTED.

LAMPEDUSA, TWO DAYS AGO THE FUNERALS OF THE YOUNG SOMALIS WHO DIED ON SATURDAY: FOR THE FIRST TIME TWO VICTIMS OF THE MEDITERRANEAN WILL BE REMEMBERED BY THEIR NAMES

Rome, 5 April 2013 - “The tragic death byhypothermia of two young Somalis rescued last Saturday along with other 192 migrants by the Italian Coast Guard off the shore of Lampedusa before they could even be transferred to the mainland shows once more that the real emergency in the Mediterranean is the high number of those who, fleeing persecution, poverty and war, continue to lose their lives at sea.”

This is what has been said by the IOM Rome, which has been working in Lampedusa since 2006 together with Save the Children and the Italian Red Cross within the Praesidium project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Interior.

The funerals of the two young men took place on Wednesday morning in Lampedusa. Thanks to the collaboration of the Mayor of Lampedusa, for the first time their gravestones will not be anonymous but they will bear the names of the victims, who could be identified by the testimony of their friends and fellow travellers.

“In the past”, explains José Angel Oropeza, Director of the Coordinating Office for the Mediterranean, “it has never been possible to give a name to the victims of shipwrecks off the shores of the Pelagian Islands.

“For the first time”, says Oropeza, “the Municipality of Lampedusa issued a certificate of death of migrants who died at sea. For the first time migrants dying in the Sicilian Channel are not only numbers. They could at least get the dignity of their names back.”

According to the testimony of migrants rescued on Saturday, the number of victims could be more than two. Some migrants reported that several people who departed from Libya with them are missing and they may have fallen into the sea during the journey, due to the extremely difficult weather conditions.

For further information: 

Flavio Di Giacomo, IOM Rome, Tel: +39 06  44 186 207,  fdigiacomo@iom.int

See an earlier blog on the extraordinary story of the Madonna Under the Sea, here http://joejoebloggs.blogspot.com/2012/02/madonna-of-sea-lampedusa-end-of-evil.html

On the razor's edge: Recovery in Northern Sri Lanka

A haircut and a shave in Edward Roshan’s barber shop outside Killinochchi, northern Sri Lanka costs just under two dollars. He and his family have become specialists in close shaves – their life over the past seven years is a blur of conflict, escape, hunger, hardship, loss of identity and fear. I met Edward a couple of weeks ago and wrote this story for www.iom.int. 

Barber shop quartet: Edward Roshan (second from left) with his business partners at Theela Salon, just outside Killinochchi

This amiable father of two, who has been to hell and back, is forging a new life for himself with a small grant received from the EU via IOM. His barber shop, at Parantan Junction, has been completely rebuilt from the war ruin it became in 2008, as he and his family ran for their lives when two years fighting between the Sri Lankan army and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ended up on their doorstep.

Edward, his wife, and two small children survived the nightmare final showdown. He was among the group of several thousand Tamils who were forced by the LTTE to follow them into the ever-smaller “fire free zones”, eventually ending up on the beach at Mullaitivu, scared witless with nowhere further to run.

“My children were six years and eight months old,” he remembers. “It was terrible. Lots of my relatives were injured and people were shot down in front of us. Our own survival felt very questionable. We had a little rice, but it was difficult to find water.”

For a time he lived in what was the world’s largest camp for displaced persons at Manik Farm. Then, reunited with his family, he and his wife sold her jewellery to start a barber shop with his brother.

Then his life took another twist. He found it difficult to settle after his experiences. “I was always thinking that the war might restart and everything reminded me of those incidents. I needed to leave the country”.

Along with dozens of others he paid thousands of dollars for a secretive journey, organised by a company in France, that promised a new life in Canada. A plane took him and his family to Delhi, then to Addis Ababa and finally to Togo. They then walked across country to Benin, where an agent told them they would wait for three months for a boat which would take them on to Canada.

Nine months later, after enduring privation “like being back in the war again” they realised they were not going to move further. Some of the men escaped and notified IOM, who managed to arrange for the whole group to be repatriated.

Edward received a grant of USD 4,500 which enabled him to open his own shop, Theepa Salon, on the spot where his previous business stood. He employed three of his friends as partners and they are doing a brisk business, from 7am to 9pm, six days a week.

Killinochchi, the former headquarters of the Tamil Tigers, is rebuilding now. New business are opening, hotels are getting a lick of paint. Bakeries, shops, sawmills and internet cafes are bustling.

But Edward is wary about saying he has given up on his dream of emigrating.  “If I could go again legally, I would.”

His uncertainty for the future is something that IOM is trying hard to address. “It is hugely important for us to continue to fund community development programmes across the island”, stresses Richard Danziger, IOM’s Chief of Mission in Sri Lanka.

“Jobs and a sense of self-worth prevent tensions from spilling over. More than that, they keep communities together and prevent the exploitation of would-be migrants. And migrants or failed asylum seekers who are unsuccessful in remaining overseas need to know that there is a chance for them to have another shot at making it work back at home”.

World Down Syndrome Day and I feel depressed and violent

 "People with mental disabilities see it all: dismissal, contempt, affectionate pity. People look into the rounded face and unguarded gaze of someone with extra chromosomes and see a stereotype: a child who is lovable, adorable, maybe a little stubborn. What they do not see is an individual — or an equal." 

A pint and a snog. Everyone OK with that?

There are some things that you see coming, and you look away. You wonder what impact it would have had on your life it you had had the courage to look. There are other things that whizz up in front of you before you have the chance to evaluate the danger to your emotions. The article below is one I wish I had never read.

I am the brother of a man with Down Syndrome, and I love him deeply. This article made me want to commit unspeakable violence. I can imagine my brother Luke behaving like Ethan did in this article,enjoying being in the cinema, not realising that a ticket is valid for one showing only (although Luke would not go to Zero Dark Thirty alone, if at all).

There is a lot I could write about this article and how despairing and violent it makes me feel, but better not to dwell on that. Frankly, my emotions scare me. Better to thank the author for highlighting the issue and on this - world Down Syndrome Day - remember that equality means acceptance.

(I should say that thankfully, Carmona/St John of God services, and Irish society, offer Luke excellent opportunities. The Irish state does its best to cut essential services, but somehow Carmona manages and finds the resources. We are extremely grateful.)

And so to the article, from Tuesday's New York Times. You've had full warning. It's not an easy read. If you'd rather have a pleasant day, don't read on.

***

You may not have heard of Robert Ethan Saylor, but his death in January should inspire something more lasting than a small-town police investigation.

Mr. Saylor, who was known as Ethan, had Down syndrome, a genetic condition that causes learning difficulties. He was 26 and lived with his family in New Market, Md., in Frederick County. On the day he died, he went to a local mall to see the film “Zero Dark Thirty.” When it ended, his caregiver went to get the car. Mr. Saylor went back in and sat down for the next showing.

Theater employees told him to buy another ticket or leave. When Mr. Saylor refused, they called mall security, three off-duty county sheriff’s deputies who tried to drag him out of the theater. According to the sheriff’s office, Mr. Saylor cursed and struggled. He was handcuffed and ended up on the floor. Something happened, and then he died.

The medical examiner said it was a homicide, by asphyxiation. The county state’s attorney is considering whether to take the case to a grand jury.

Joe Espo, a lawyer who is representing the Saylor family, said the deputies “clearly had no idea of what they were getting into or how to de-escalate the situation or exercise the judgment to say this just wasn’t worth it.” Mr. Espo said that witnesses heard Mr. Saylor cry, “I want my mommy!”

He described Mr. Saylor as a friendly guy known for giving long hugs and as a police buff. “He was just sort of entranced by law enforcement,” Mr. Espo said. “He liked speaking to them and visiting them and until that day had O.K. interactions with them.”

All parents worry about their children, but those whose children have developmental disabilities have a particular burden. They worry about acceptance, about shielding their children from cruelty and ignorance.

And they worry about physical harm. On the blog of a group called Down Syndrome Uprising, parents are talking about Ethan Saylor and are angry about the misinformation, stereotypes and even violence toward people with mental disabilities. “This violence is a symptom of how we view people who are different from us,” one mother wrote.

Her post reflects the impatience of parents at odds with a society unwilling to accept their children’s full humanity. The abuse of the disabled is a symptom. So is the recurring tragedy of police agencies unable to deal with people who are not criminal or dangerous, but vulnerable. We don’t know how this confrontation turned lethal — whether it was excessive force, lack of training or some unavoidable accident — though it is disturbing that Frederick County does not teach officers how to handle encounters with the mentally disabled.

Without prejudging the Saylor investigation, it is easy to see the truth in that mother’s observation. In a society that values equality, intellectual differences remain a barrier to acceptance. People with mental disabilities see it all: dismissal, contempt, affectionate pity. People look into the rounded face and unguarded gaze of someone with extra chromosomes and see a stereotype: a child who is lovable, adorable, maybe a little stubborn. What they do not see is an individual — or an equal.

Thursday is World Down Syndrome Day. Its goal is “to raise people’s awareness and understanding of Down syndrome.” It is well meaning, but for some that is not enough anymore. As Down Syndrome Uprising puts it: “Done with awareness. Moving on to acceptance.”

A version of this editorial appeared in print on March 19, 2013, on page A26 of the New York edition with the headline: A Young Man With Down Syndrome, a Fatal Encounter and a Cry for Understanding.