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.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS