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Japan plans to compensate former South Korea, Taiwan leprosy patients
(AFP)
Updated: 2006-01-25 10:05
Japanese lawmakers plan to compensate former leprosy patients in South Korea
and Taiwan who were forcibly secluded under Japanese colonial rule.
Lawmakers are moving to revise a 2001 law that set out payments for hundreds
of Japanese patients who suffered decades of systematic abuse by the state, a
health ministry official said Tuesday.
The official did not know further details, but the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper
said Japan planned to offer eight million yen (69,800 dollars) to each of 431
South Korean and Taiwanese patients who had demanded compensation from Japan.
The sum is the minimum redress required under the law passed in Japan's
parliament in June 2001, with former patients eligible for up to 14 million yen
each in compensation.
The Korean and Taiwanese patients have demanded the same treatment as their
Japanese counterparts.
Two judges handling the Taiwanese and Korean cases separately at a Tokyo
court last year arrived at different conclusions on whether the law applies to
facilities located overseas -- a point that is not explicitly defined in the
text.
Taiwanese won a legal victory, while Koreans lost on the grounds there was no
evidence that Japan's governing parties took patients in sanatoriums overseas
into consideration when they drew up the 2001 law.
The defense counsel involved in both lawsuits has hoped to find a swift
solution, as the average age of the plaintiffs is already over 81.
Japan from 1907 forcibly isolated patients as a national policy, a practice
that continued after it was established that leprosy could not be contracted
simply by touching.
Compensation issues have frequently clouded Japan's relations with its
neighbors. Japan has ruled out individual payouts for Chinese, Koreans and
others who suffered atrocities under its rule, saying compensation is decided at
the state level.
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