|
The Tokyo District Court's Third Civil Division has turned down a claim for compensation from 117 Korean leprosy patients who were herded into a leper colony by Japanese occupation forces. But on the same day, the same court¡¯s 38th Civil Division accepted a claim for compensation from a group of 25 interned Taiwanese leprosy victims, ruling that forcibly segregated patients must be compensated regardless of their nationality.
Though judges make their decisions independently, two diametrically opposed judgments delivered on the same day and in the same court are more than a little peculiar. Japan¡¯s Diet legislated the Hansen disease compensation law in 2001 for the purpose of relieving a little of the suffering of the patients from discrimination and abuse by the Japanese government. Under the law, those interned in leprosaria in Japan are entitled to up to 14 million yen in compensation.
An advisory committee under Japan¡¯s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare issued a report in March saying those interned in the leprosarium on Korea¡¯s Sorok Island suffered double the abuse of their human rights, both as people of a colonized country and as leprosy patients abused like their Japanese fellow sufferers. Kang Woo-sok (80), one of the plaintiffs, testified that a fellow internee in Sorok Island was castrated on the grounds that he had cooked rice with fallen leaves. Kang¡¯s own leg was amputated with a saw without anesthesia when an injury caused by a beating would not heal, he said.
In rejecting the claim, the Third Civil Division ruled compensation for patients interned in leprosy facilities outside Japan proper was not discussed in the course of legislating the Hansen disease compensation law. The 38th Civil Division ruled that since there was no separate provision stipulating that patients segregated in facilities outside the country should not be compensated, it saw no reason to exclude them from compensation under the principle of equal treatment.
The average age of the 117 Korean leprosy victims is 81.6 years. Japan must see to it that they are compensated. Either it will have to revise the law, or it will have to provide a decent positive interpretation of it: whatever it takes.
|
