The bill prevents the government from evicting residents from the sanatorium or conducting any form of isolation. In addition to rehabilitation and compensation, the government is required to form a committee of leprosy patients, scholars and representatives from civic groups to promote the welfare of leprosy patients. The present Losheng facilities would also be preserved, the bill states.
The draft bill will go directly to a second reading in the Legislative Yuan. The preservation of Losheng Sanatorium, however, is still in question. The bill might not become law before April 16, the deadline the Taipei County Government has posted for residents at the sanatorium to move out.
Located on the Taipei and Taoyuan county lines, the 77-year-old buildings that comprise Losheng Sanatorium were first built during the Japanese colonial era and expanded under Kuomintang rule. Segregation was instituted during these periods, forcing lepers to live there in isolation from the rest of society. A cure for leprosy, also known as Hansen's disease, was discovered in the 1950s. Although segregation was abandoned in 1962, it was not until 1996 that Losheng stopped receiving additional patients. By the 1990s, Losheng had developed into a self-sufficient community with residents having lived there since their youth.
In the late 1990s, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp. acquired the sparsely populated land of the Losheng complex to build a mass rapid transit system route, which would extend from Taipei City to Sinjhuang in Taipei County. Plans for maintenance facilities and parking tracks required demolition of the sanatorium. Meanwhile, construction began of a new high-rise medical facility near Losheng that would accommodate all of its patients. It was only in 2001, however, that Losheng residents realized they would be relocated to new buildings.
According to Cheng Shun-ping, vice director of Losheng Sanatorium, there are currently 305 registered patients, with an average age of 75, of which 95 percent have distorted limbs and nerves. As of now, 204 out of the 305 patients have moved to the new housing designed for them, around 50 chose to live with their families, and the remaining 45 refused to leave the place they have called home for around half a century and insisted on receiving on-site care.
Liu Ke-chiang, a professor at the Graduate Institute of Building and Planning at National Taiwan University, proposed a plan in December 2004 to make changes to the MRT facilities to allow for the coexistence of the sanatorium and the MRT. Similar plans were proposed since then, including one that envisioned a museum park, co-planned by the Youth Alliance for Losheng, a student group formed in 2004, and professors from Feng Chia University.
Patients also formed a preservation association in 2005. More activists joined in, making petitions to such government agencies as the Taipei city and county governments as well as the Executive Yuan, and on June 23, 2006, patients and supporters took to the streets for the first time to make their appeal to the public.
In December 2005, the Council for Culture Affairs applied the newly amended Cultural Heritage Preservation Act and designated the Losheng area as a "temporary historic site," which required the county government to assess the historical value of the location. In April 2006, Taipei County Government proposed a revision that could preserve 41 percent of the present site, which was about 30 percent of the original 30-hectare Losheng complex, with 70 percent having already undergone construction for the MRT. The plan, however, required tearing down what preservationists called the most precious part of the complex, including the hospital's administration building and a Buddhist shrine, leaving only buildings located relatively high on the hillside intact, according to information provided by Save Losheng, a Web site started by Losheng preservationists.
The CCA proposed another revision in October 2006, which it had commissioned Hsin Lu Engineering Consultancy Co., under the U.K.-based Mott MacDonald Group, to produce. The CCA proposal would preserve 91 percent of the sanatorium by making a bigger curve of the tracks leading to the MRT maintenance site. The plan was rejected by the Taipei Rapid Transit Corp. on the grounds of safety concerns and possible cost overruns. The Executive Yuan officially turned down the CCA revision March 2.
However, lack of transparency in making that decision prompted activists to stage protests in front of Premier Su Tseng-chang's home March 8 and 11, where Losheng supporters clashed with police. Activists demanded that the government make the review process for the CCA plan transparent and hold public hearings, insisting that no Losheng residents should be evicted before these are done.
In the past few weeks, members of the Losheng preservation association visited leaders of major political parties and Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng, asking them to expedite review of the compensation act in the hope that the sanatorium could be saved from demolition by the April 16 deadline.
Meanwhile, according to local media reports, county government officials and local representatives expressed their support for the demolition, saying that any delay in construction would cause a tremendous loss of money and compromise the rights of over 1 million citizens who lived along the Sinjhuang line.
On March 23, Premier Su made public apologies on behalf of the government for not handling the case well. He later said that he had instructed officials of the Public Construction Commission under the Executive Yuan to negotiate with the TRTC and find out a legal solution that would "preserve as much of the cultural heritage as possible while keeping changes to the construction to a minimum," Taiwan's Central News Agency reported March 26.
Write to June Tsai at june@mail.gio.gov.tw