AP Features, April 15th, 2007
More than 3,000 students and activists marched in Taipei on Sunday to protest a government plan to evict dozens of aging leprosy sufferers and demolish their sanatorium to make way for a new subway line.
The Losheng Leprosy Sanatorium, in the Taipei suburb of Hsinchuang, was built in 1932 to quarantine leprosy patients, cutting them off from family and society.
Police said there were more than 3,000 protesters at Sunday's march.
Leprosy, a chronic infectious disease, can cause progressive damage to the skin, nerves, limbs and eyes. Effective treatment for it began to appear only in the late 1940s.
The sanatorium once housed some 1,000 patients. Taiwanese authorities recently relocated all but a few dozen of the sanatorium's 300 remaining sufferers to prepare for the compound's demolition to make way for the subway line.
But about 45 patients have refused to be moved, saying the spacious compound covered by a wide canopy of trees is their home.
Their cause has won the support of many medical workers and rights activists. Over the past three years, activists have advocated for keeping the sanatorium as a historic relic or eventually to turn it into a museum to mark the past mistreatment of sufferers.
"We are ashamed by the rude treatment to a group of aging people who have lived a life of calamity," said Chen Chih-wei, a protest leader.
Premier Su Tseng-chang agreed last week to put off the demolition plan until authorities could find a way to reroute the subway line. He also promised to preserve at least part of the sanatorium if possible.
Chen said Sunday's protest was staged to pressure the government to keep its promise.
Local residents have also staged numerous demonstrations protesting the long delay in the 176 billion New Taiwan dollar (US$5.3 billion, euro3.9 billion) subway linking Hsinchuang to downtown Taipei.
