Here’s a story I can practically guarantee you haven’t heard before (I only found it mentioned on one site – one of my favorites – MercatorNet) ~ Why has Japan’s massacre of disabled gone unnoticed? This was a tragedy made even more so by the fact that certain lives really don’t seem to matter as much as others ~
 

On July 26, 2016 a man wielding a knife broke into Tsukui Yamayuriena, a home for the disabled outside of Tokyo and brutally murdered 19 people as they slept, while injuring another 26. Afterwards, he turned himself in to a local police station, with the explanation:
“It is better that the disabled disappear.”
 
Disability advocates have expressed dismay that the massacre – Japan’s deadliest mass killing since World War II – has received so little attention relative to mass killings in Paris, Nice, Orlando, Kabul and Baghdad.

 

 Apparently Satoshi Uematsu was a self-appointed grim reaper for these unfortunate souls ~

Broadcaster NTV (via Reuters) reported that the arrested man presented a letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japan’s parliament in February calling for euthanasia of disabled people.
 
It quoted the letter as saying: “My goal is a world in which, in cases where it is difficult for the severely disabled to live at home and be socially active, they can be euthanised with the consent of their guardians.”

 
The scant coverage of this brutal attack may be partially due to cultural beliefs ~

In Japan there is a deep stigma against those who are unable to work. Indeed, it is still common to institutionalize people with disabilities, intellectual or otherwise, that impede their productivity.
 
By warehousing people with disabilities, institutions send the message that they need to be segregated and managed. It becomes easy for their differences to be seen as a shameful and frightening secret that happens to other, less worthy people.

 
The article’s author, Rachael Adams, focuses on the history of institutionalizing those with mental disabilities and its continued practice ~

We forget they are individuals whose lives have meaning and value. Their senseless deaths are just as tragically newsworthy and deserving of memorialization as those of all other victims of mass violence.

 
The world still has a long way to go in acknowledging that we are all created in God’s image, and therefore each individual human life is worthy of being treated with respect and dignity. But in recognizing their humanity, we may truly find our own.