International Association for Integrity, Dignity and Economic Advancement (IDEA) — a non-governmental organization with consulting status in the UN — announced yesterday that it would help Losheng Sanatorium in its efforts to gain UNESCO’s World Heritage site status.
IDEA’s international coordinator Anwei Law made the announcement at the end of a two-day conference on welfare for people with Hansen’s disease — also known as leprosy — and preservation of former leprosaria.
Located in Sinjhuang City (新莊), Taipei County, Losheng was constructed during the Japanese colonial period to isolate people with Hansen’s disease, which was considered highly infectious and incurable at the time.
After years of campaigning for preserving Losheng — as a plan to build a Mass Rapid Transit maintenance depot originally required a complete demolition of the sanatorium — the government came up with a compromise plan in 2007 that would preserve part of the site.
After discussions and inspecting the sanatorium, participants in the conference all agreed that Losheng qualified to apply for World Heritage status.
“Losheng has value not only for its past, for human rights, but also for the movement [for its preservation], the intergeneration exchanges that are happening now,” Law said.
By “intergeneration exchange,” Law said she was referring to young students’ involvement in the preservation campaign.
Nishimura Yukio, former vice president of International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), agreed.
ICOMOS is a consultative body that participates in evaluation of UNESCO’s World Cultural Heritage nominations.
While Losheng may not be a “masterpiece of creative genius” or serve as a “testimony to a cultural tradition,” Nishimura said “it meets the ‘associative value’ criterion of UNESCO’s six criteria for World Heritage sites for its connection to the human rights movement.”
He said that other sites that were listed as World Heritage sites because of their associative value include the Hiroshima Peace Memorial that commemorates the explosion of the nuclear bomb that led to Japan’s surrender in World War II, the Auschwitz concentration camp and the historic center of Warsaw — 80 percent of which was reconstructed after World War II.
While some members of the audience were concerned that Taiwan might not be able to file the application as it is not a UN member, Nishumura said there was a solution.
“It’s difficult to initiate [the application] from your government, but it can be initiated by international organizations or other state parties,” he said.
However, Nishimura also voiced his concern that the maintenance depot construction may damage it.
“This is very important for Losheng, because if you lose part of it, you lose the integrity,” he said, adding that the conditions of authenticity and integrity are factors that the UNESCO would look at when reviewing applications.
On the other hand, while expressing support for the campaign to become a World Heritage site and saying they would help, two Council for Cultural Affairs officials attending the conference declined to explain how the council would help to protect Losheng’s integrity or if it would be willing to designate Losheng as a historic site.
“We’re attending the conference as individuals who care about the issue, not as officials,” one of them said.
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