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Leper colony to stage dramatic protest at WHO's HQ

Disillusioned by fruitless negotiations with government agencies, Taiwan's elderly lepers will take their case to the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva tomorrow, adding fresh momentum to their decade-long protest against the government's plan to force over 300 lepers into a high-rise hospital.

Two lepers and several graduate students from a grassroots organization called Taiwan Youth Union for Lepers' Rights yesterday held a placard reading "Rage against Taiwan's leprosy killer policy," and sang a satirical song titled "Taiwanese Miracle" to rail at the government in front of the Department of Health.

"While our government drums up our bid for WHO under the name of human rights in the international community, some officials are actually trampling on the rights of a disadvantaged minority here," said Yang You-ren (楊友仁), a volunteer at Taiwan Youth Union for Lepers' Rights and doctoral candidate at National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Building and Planning.

The dispute flared up in 2003, when Taipei County officials began demolishing the 70-year-old Lo Sheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院), built under Japanese colonial rule, to make room for the Taipei mass rapid transit (MRT) system's Sinjhuang line.

To make the traffic infrastructure project possible, the Department of Health planned to remove over 300 lepers, some wheelchair-bound, from the elegant Japanese-style houses surrounded by banyan trees to the newly-built, modern, eight-floor Huilung Hospital (迴龍醫院) nearby.

After the advocate groups negotiated with the health authority last week, the deadline to relocate all lepers still remained set for July 15.

The health officials' indifference further fueled the lepers' anger.

"No one ever asked us whether we wanted to move when the Department of Health ceded the hospital land to Taipei City's rapid transit department ten years ago," said the 69-year-old leper Chen San-lang (陳三郎).

According to the Taiwan Lepers' Self-Help Organization, the government agencies never secured the consent of about 300 leper patients who had been forced into segregation by the Japanese colonial regime since 1930.

"And no official is really paying attention to our wish -- to stay at Happy Life Sanatorium," said the 52-year-old leper Yiu Wen-chi (尤文智).

"It [Living in the new hospital] will be a second imprisonment. I bet that many will die in there," Yiu wailed.

Accompanied by two student volunteers, Chen and Yiu will fly to Switzerland this afternoon and stage a mini-drama outside of the WHO's headquarters on Monday in Geneva. As Taiwanese officials launch their ninth WHO bid, a group of patients and Taiwan Youth Union for Lepers' Rights will also kick off a publicity campaign, including issuing news releases, visiting the Conference of NGOs in consultative relationship with the UN, and bringing their petition to the Minister of the Department of Health, Hou Sheng-mou (侯勝茂) at a dinner ball held by Taiwanese officials on Monday.

"We've also contacted various influential non-governmental groups in Geneva, such as International Service for Human Rights, Equity International, Global Forum for Health Research, Doctors Without Borders, International Labor Office and others," said Tsai Tsung-fung (蔡宗芳), a student from National Yang Ming University who will accompany the two lepers during their Geneva trip.

"We will seek their support and ask them to write to our president," said Tsai.

"When a government forces lepers to be jailed in a hospital while crying for recognition at the WHO, it is nothing more but official hypocrisy," Tsai said.
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