Disability advocate sues airline in the Philippines

From the Sun Star in the Philippines August 9:

The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) will pursue a complaint against an airline company for allegedly violating the constitutional right of a disabled person.

Complainant Katrina Segundo Casiño had requested the CHR, through special investigator Jesus Cañete, for help in filing the complaint against Cebu Pacific Airlines for the alleged gross discriminatory acts against a person with disability, citing the Magna Carta for the Disabled.

In her sworn statement, Casiño narrated that sometime in August 2007, she was to attend the launching of a publication where she had contributed two articles in a coffee-table book. But while waiting for her boarding pass, she was told that she is unfit to travel unaccompanied, and was also given a run-around by a Cebu Pacific Airline staff.

She was allegedly made to sign multiple documents that were sort of waivers, despite her insistence she is not a health threat to anyone, only having a neurological disorder, and that her condition is non-infectious. Casiño secured a certification from her physician at the Silliman University Medical Center in Dumaguete City, but was again told she is unfit to travel unaccompanied.

Casiño is a recipient of the Apolinario Mabini Award from then President Joseph Estrada in 1999 for her remarkable accomplishments, specifically in advocacy work for the upliftment of the status of persons with disabilities.

"If such acts are tolerated, this may cause the airline company to treat the eight million or so handicapped Filipinos in like manner," Casiño said.

Meanwhile, Cañete scored the airline company for ignoring his communication asking them to respond to the complaint. In an unsigned letter to the complainant dated July 3, 2008, Cebu Pacific Air manager of guest services, Noel Bulanan, offered her gift certificates that can be converted to two round trip tickets for any domestic destination, as an act of goodwill from the company.

Cañete, however, considered this as adding insult to injury to the complainant.