The Japan stabbing is not just terrorism – it’s a hate crime that disabled people like me live in fear of

Behind Satoshi Uematsu's grotesque act of terror lies a sobering reality: we, the disabled, are oppressed, dehumanised and hated

Japanese police officers check around a residential care facility (part of the facility tower is seen in rear) for disabled people in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 60km west of Tokyo, Japan, 26 July, 2016 (EPA)

The last 30 days have been blood-soaked in unparalleled tragedy. From Turkey to Baghdad, from Nice to the US, terrorism has taken numerous innocent lives. There is no longer time to mourn; before commentators can even try to piece events together, yet more numbing news breaks.

You’d be forgiven, then, for thinking that yesterday’s stabbing spree at a centre for the disabled just outside Tokyo, which left 18 dead and 27 injured, was another part of this new world of fear and terror. But Japan is different. This was not just an act of terrorism; it was a premeditated hate crime against disabled people – and the worst massacre in Japan’s history since World War II.

Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee of the facility, crept in on his former patients at dawn, stabbing each victim, one by one in their sleep. “I did it,” he told police as he handed himself in. “It is better that disabled people disappear.”

Chillingly, Uematsu had previously written to Japanese authorities offering to methodically “wipe out” Japan’s disabled community. His letter repeats the claim that “all disabled people should cease to exist”. “I envision a world where a person with multiple disabilities can be euthanised,” he wrote.

This atrocity has all the hallmarks of a psychopath-at-large; another quiet, unsuspecting, Xbox-loving weasel comes out of the woodwork to thrust the world into a state of perplexed grief. It would be easy to confine this latest tragedy to that peculiar, theatrical set of facts. Yet, Uematasu’s attack on the outskirts of Tokyo is symptomatic of a wider problem.

What makes Uematsu a psychopath is the utterly savage manner in which he acted on his contempt for the disabled, but behind his grotesque act of terror lies a sobering reality: we, the disabled, are oppressed, dehumanised and hated.

We are seen as a hindrance to society, sucking the life out of a dying economy, feeding off the struggling state. We are the lazy leeches who rob you, “the taxpayer”, of your hard-earned wages.

The UK is no exception. As a disabled person, I have felt the sting of ablest contempt. It comes in the form of irritation from passengers who give up their seats on the bus because it’s now rude not to. It comes as shouting, impatient doctors who conflate my blindness for deafness. It’s the indignant lecturers who are asked to reformat their inaccessible PowerPoint presentations. And it’s the bouncer in Norwich who assaulted me because my “loopy eyes” suggested I was “too fucked” to get into the club.

Fortunately, at the time of writing, I haven’t been the subject of hate crime. Yet. Last year saw a 213 per cent rise in hate crime against people with disabilities. According to the charity Scope, one in six disabled people have experienced intimidating or aggressive behaviour.

Some of these crimes are more than just petty attacks. In Newcastle, 24-year-old Lee Irving, who had autism, was brutally murdered in what police believed to be a disability hate crime. He, like the Japan victims, was stabbed to death, his body abandoned on a patch of yellowing grass, 10 miles from his mother’s home.

The world is a bitterly ugly place to live in right now; wars, coups and bombs plague us. But for disabled people, living in an atmosphere of fear and anxiety is nothing new. It’s the way it’s always been for us, and unless perceptions of our place in society change, it looks like it’s going to stay that way.