Japan is to compensate Taiwanese and South Korean leprosy patients who were incarcerated during Japanese colonial rule, it was reported on Sunday.
Compensation suits filed by the foreign patients were mired in confusion last week after one judge at the Tokyo district court ruled in favor of the Taiwanese plaintiffs while, on the same day, a different judge at the same court threw out similar claims by the South Koreans.
Although the Japanese government is expected to appeal against the ruling on the Taiwanese patients, the health and welfare ministry plans to reach a court-mediated settlement with both groups of patients, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.
More than 400 Taiwanese and South Korean patients forced to live in segregated sanitariums by the Japanese authorities are eligible for compensation. The exact sum has yet to be agreed, although one estimate puts the total figure at ?3.5 billion (US$29.8 million).
The move is an apparent attempt to reconcile the conflicting rulings involving 25 Taiwanese and 117 South Korean plaintiffs and to atone for decades of forcibly segregating leprosy patients, a policy that was also pursued in Japan until 1996. In a report compiled earlier this year, the health ministry admitted that Japan had "infringed on the human rights" of leprosy patients in its colonies.
Japan occupied the Korean peninsula from 1910 to 1945, and Taiwan was a Japanese colony from 1895 until the end of World War II.
The men and women in the recent cases -- most of whom are in their 80s -- claim they are entitled to redress under a 2001 landmark ruling by a Japanese court. The government claims, however, that the law does not apply to patients overseas, even though they were locked up by Japanese colonial authorities.
As in Japan, patients in Taiwan and South Korea were confined to special isolation centres, despite evidence that leprosy -- which is now known as Hansen's disease -- was curable and very difficult to pass on.
The residents, who included young children, were forcibly prevented from leaving the institutions. Those who wanted to marry were sterilized and women who became pregnant were forced to have abortions.
Conditions in Taiwan and South Korea were often worse, with the residents suffering additional abuse as subjects of colonial Japan.
They included 84-year-old Chang Gi-jin, who has lived in Sorokto hospital, a South Korean leprosarium built in 1916 by the Japanese, since he was in his early 20s. Chang, who is one of only 700 remaining residents, said that he was stunned by the court's ruling last week.
"We have little time left," Chang said. "What am I going to tell my companions at Sorokto?"
Taiwan and South Korea both ended the forced segregation of leprosy patients during the 1960s, in line with international norms, but Japan did not abolish its quarantine policy until 1996.
In 2001, one of Junichiro Koizumi's first acts as prime minister was to meet some of the former patients and apologize to them in person.
The government has since paid out compensation of more than ?42 billion to 3,475 people.
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