Legislators Lai Shin-yuan of the opposition Taiwan Solidarity Union and Joanna C. Lei of the opposition Kuomintang held a press conference with members of the Losheng patients' self-help organization and an alliance of preservationist to protest against the final decision made by the Public Construction Commission (PCC) under the Executive Yuan the previous day to only preserve 39 buildings in the 70-year-old leprosarium compound.
Lai claimed that under the PCC decision to "preserve 39 buildings while relocating the other 10," only 50 percent of the 4-hectare compound will be preserved. The resolution completely violates the promise former Premier Su Tseng-chang made during his term in office.
During his meeting with Losheng patients and preservationists in mid-April, Su promised that the government "would do its utmost" to promote the adoption of a project option that would retain 90 percent of the existing compound, located in the way of an under-construction metro line in Hsinchuang, while still avoiding a delay to the opening of the line.
Lai claimed that Su's promise was a lie and demanded that new Premier Chang Chun-hsiung make clear whether or not Su's promise will be kept.
The controversial leprosarium was built in 1930 by Japanese colonizers to segregate and treat patients with Hansen's disease. The Kuomintang regime in its early years in Taiwan inherited the policy but in later years, patients were allowed to leave the sanitarium. Many, however, having lived in chronic isolation and facing discrimination, had little choice but to stay and have long since grown accustomed to their home.
Several dozen elderly patients still live in the compound and are resisting the government's plan to relocate them to a nearby high-rise hospital.
Preservationists have been advocating the patients' right to stay and say that as the only leper colony in Taiwan, the institution provides living testimony to past indignities endured by the patients and is thus of great historical and cultural value.
