Disappointed Losheng Sanatorium residents and preservationists promised to appeal yesterday after the Taiwan High Administrative Court dismissed a lawsuit against various government bodies filed in April.
The Sanatorium in Taipei County sanatorium was completed in 1930 during the Japanese colonial rule and was used to isolate thousands of people with Hansen's disease -- more commonly known as leprosy.
A plan to tear down most of the buildings on the sanatorium's grounds for the construction of a Mass Rapid Transportation (MRT) maintenance depot was met with strong opposition.
Preservationists claim that forcing Losheng residents to move after decades of forced isolation is a serious violation of their human rights.
Preservationists also contend that the sanatorium bears important witness to Taiwan's public health history.
Geologists including Wang Wei-min (
To highlight their concerns, preservationists and Losheng residents filed an administrative lawsuit in April against the Department of Health, Taipei City Department of Rapid Transit Systems and the sanatorium administration.
"The original site selected for the maintenance depot is around Fujen Catholic University, but was later changed to the Losheng site because there was a change in the urban development plan," Losheng Lepers' Self-Help Organization chairman Lee Tien-pei (李添培) told the Taipei Times in a telephone interview.
"Because of the change, the construction budget increased from NT$1.5 billion [US$46 million] to NT$4 billion -- we wanted to know whether any illegality was involved," Lee said.
Preservationists say that the defendants were engaged in administrative misconduct for starting construction before the review of Losheng's historic value and the legislative process of the Hansen's Disease Human Rights Act were completed.
The court, however, still dismissed the case.
The court ruled that the residents are not allowed to be the litigants in the case, as they do not have rights over the sanatorium, a CNA report said.
Meanwhile, the court said Losheng residents' request to halt the construction was not legally feasible since the National Compensation Act stipulates that compensation may be redeemed in the form of monetary measures or restoration of the building to its original state, the report said.
After hearing the verdict, Losheng residents and preservationists said they would appeal.
"We asked the court to investigate whether any illegality was involved in the change of site, and we asked the judge to come visit the sanatorium in person -- they did neither," Lee said. "We will appeal."
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching