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.