Politicians aren't listening and the police have used bizarre tactics to disrupt their protests, so activists fighting to save Losheng Sanatorium are cranking up the volume with four days of rock concerts to raise awareness for their cause.
More than 30 indie acts — including punk group 88 Guava Seeds (八 十 八顆芭樂籽), Hakka folk combo Hohak Band (好客樂隊), post-rock band Orange Grass (橙草) and underground collective KbN — are scheduled to perform at the Ideal Art Festival (理想藝術節), which runs this and next weekend near Fujen Catholic University (輔仁大學) in Sinjhuang Township (新莊), Taipei County.
The goal: save the Losheng — or Happy Life (樂生療養院) — leprosarium, a hospital and home for lepers recently designated a temporary historic site. Taipei City's Department of Rapid Transit Systems (TRTC) wants to demolish the complex to make room for an MRT station. Advocates say the move would destroy an important piece of local history and disrupt the lives of Losheng's elderly residents.
PHOTO: TAIPEI TIMES
Festival planner Zoe Yu (游佩勳) said the concert would also call attention to "rude" methods employed by police to disperse previous protests. Officers blocked a group of 100 students and wheelchair-bound residents on Sunday from presenting a petition at the home of Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌). Police hauled some of the students off in a van and abandoned them in the mountains near Neihu, Yu said.
"We have to be clear about our human rights and we want the government to recognize the people's rights. You can't just take someone's home and treat the patients the way the government has been treating them," Yu said.
Built in 1930 during Japanese colonial rule, Longsheng is the only public leprosarium in Taiwan and has housed more than 300 patients, most of whom were forced to leave their families in their teens and are now in their 60s and 70s. Following a policy originally instituted by the Japanese, people with leprosy, or Hansen's disease, were segregated by law until the 1980s, and Losheng became a self-sufficient community.
In 1994, Taipei County sold the land on which the sanatorium stood to the TRTC for the construction of part of the Sinjhuang MRT line. Residents were not consulted and did not learn of the sale until nearly a decade later, when demolition work started.
Residents and human-rights groups have campaigned to save the leprosarium since 2004, petitioning official agencies such as the Taipei County Government, the Executive Yuan and the Council for Cultural Affairs.
In November 2005, the Council of Cultural Affairs designated Losheng a "temporary historic site," giving Taipei County six months to review the complex's historical value. The county allowed the six months to pass without conducting the review — deliberately, activists say — passing responsibility over the decision back to the central government.
Experts say the MRT's power and water treatment plants could be moved to allow for the co-existence of the sanatorium and the MRT line. But the TRTC estimates rerouting the MRT could cost more than NT$2 billion (US$63 million) and delay the project by more than three years. Politicians including Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) have spoken in favor of the demolition.
If they lose their battle to save their home, Losheng residents will be relocated to the newly built Huilung Community Hospital.
The Ideal Art Festival is organized by the Youth Losheng League, Internet culture portal CampoLive (campolive.blogspot.com), the FAM Music and Art Alliance (FAM音樂藝術聯盟, www.twfam.com) and Shibishou (詩筆獸), the group of artists and musicians who organized last month's Freak Out Beast (吵年獸) music festival. In addition to the concerts, there will be poetry readings and an outdoor market.
May 18 to May 24 Pastor Yang Hsu’s (楊煦) congregation was shocked upon seeing the land he chose to build his orphanage. It was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and the only way to access it was to cross a river by foot. The soil was poor due to runoff, and large rocks strewn across the plot prevented much from growing. In addition, there was no running water or electricity. But it was all Yang could afford. He and his Indigenous Atayal wife Lin Feng-ying (林鳳英) had already been caring for 24 orphans in their home, and they were in
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday delivered an address marking the first anniversary of his presidency. In the speech, Lai affirmed Taiwan’s global role in technology, trade and security. He announced economic and national security initiatives, and emphasized democratic values and cross-party cooperation. The following is the full text of his speech: Yesterday, outside of Beida Elementary School in New Taipei City’s Sanxia District (三峽), there was a major traffic accident that, sadly, claimed several lives and resulted in multiple injuries. The Executive Yuan immediately formed a task force, and last night I personally visited the victims in hospital. Central government agencies and the
Australia’s ABC last week published a piece on the recall campaign. The article emphasized the divisions in Taiwanese society and blamed the recall for worsening them. It quotes a supporter of the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) as saying “I’m 43 years old, born and raised here, and I’ve never seen the country this divided in my entire life.” Apparently, as an adult, she slept through the post-election violence in 2000 and 2004 by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the veiled coup threats by the military when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) became president, the 2006 Red Shirt protests against him ginned up by
As with most of northern Thailand’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) settlements, the village of Arunothai was only given a Thai name once the Thai government began in the 1970s to assert control over the border region and initiate a decades-long process of political integration. The village’s original name, bestowed by its Yunnanese founders when they first settled the valley in the late 1960s, was a Chinese name, Dagudi (大谷地), which literally translates as “a place for threshing rice.” At that time, these village founders did not know how permanent their settlement would be. Most of Arunothai’s first generation were soldiers
RSS