Talk given at the Tokyo Rotary Club Monthly Meeting [2011/07/10]
Talk given at the Tokyo Rotary Club Monthly Meeting -The Global Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) and the Great East Japan Earthquake Relief Activities- June 22, 2011 Imperial Hotel, Tokyo Many would be surprised if I said that there have always been two types of Man, ever since the birth of mankind. We are all humans but there are humans who are not acknowledged as humans. They are the people who have suffered under the burden of leprosy. I accompanied my father to South Korea to attend the ceremony of the donation of a leprosy hospital, at the age of twenty-eight. I was thunderstruck to see, for the first time, leprosy patients and the situation that they were placed in. What I saw in front of my eyes were people who were not treated as people. We talk about democracy, freedom and equality and human rights. But there are many people in this world who have no choice but to live a life without the benefit of any of these basic rights. In some countries a leprosy affected person will be divorced by the spouse. They cannot take public transportation. They are not allowed into restaurants or to stay at hotels. Even if the patients are cured of leprosy, it is not rare that even their family members, for two to three generations hence, will not be able to get married. There are many issues of human rights and discrimination that continue to rule the world. But leprosy which has existed even before the Old Testament was written has always been accompanied by terrible inhuman, merciless discrimination. This could even be the origin of discrimination; man discriminating a fellow man. Looking back into the history of leprosy we find that as many as 50,000 leprosy patients were forced into isolation on different islands such as Molokai Island in Hawaii, Roben Island (South Africa) where President Mandela was confined, many islands in the Mediterranean sea, and Culion Island in the Philippines. In Japan we find; Oshima Seisho-en in Takamatsu City (Kagawa Prefecture), Nagashima Aisei-en in Oku Town (Okayama Prefecture), Okinawa Airaku-en in Nago City (Okinawa Prefecture), and Miyako Nansei-en in Miyako Island. Leprosy has a very incomprehensible history of patients being isolated in islands all over the world ever since the ancient times even before transportation and communication had not yet developed. There are a number of reasons why the issue of leprosy had not been taken up as a major issue. One of the outstanding reasons can be said that the leprosy patients themselves never spoke up being afraid of further discrimination. Carville leprosarium in the State of Louisiana in America was closed only ten years ago, but Kalaupapa (Molokai Island, Hawaii) leprosarium still remains today. The leprosy patients did not have the right to vote until 1945. This is the situation in a developed country such as America so you can very well imagine what it is like in other parts of the world. It is worth noting that in the Middle Ages in Europe, leprosy patients were made to attend mass for the dead and considered as non-existent for many years. I visit many countries in support of the cause of leprosy. Whenever I visit the leprosy patients I greet them with a hug and a handshake. I also touch their feet and wash the raw wounds with my bare hands. But I am totally healthy so it is not an exaggeration to say that leprosy is not contagious. Fortunately a marvelous medicine has been developed and available to patients since the 1980’s and we have distributed the medicine free of charge all over the world. But the challenge was to teach the patients to follow the regiment as most people were not used to taking medicine. One example is my experience with the pygmies that live in the mountains of Africa. We distributed medicine to them but there was no effect at all. We checked to see what the reason was and found that they have a traditional custom of sharing equally all spoils of their hunt amongst them. While the medicine is given to the patients with strict instructions that it is only for the patient but it is likely that they were sharing the medicine equally amongst them. No wonder the medicine was not being effective. Despite the difficulties that we had come across we persevered and delivered the medicine throughout the world. The result was that of 122 countries that were leprosy prevalent countries in 1985 achieved, except Brazil, the criteria of elimination set by the World Health Organization (WHO) of reducing the number of registered patients to less than one per ten thousand populations. Yet the big problem with leprosy is that even after the patients are cured they are still discriminated. Therefore we must restore their lost human rights and bring them back into the society. This presents the most difficult solution to this disease. I have appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Commission (the current Human Rights Council) since 2003. I met human rights expert one by one to explain about leprosy affected people and the existent human rights issue. My efforts bore fruit and finally 59 countries, all the member states of the Human Rights Council and co-sponsor states, adopted the resolution to end discrimination against people affected by leprosy and their families, put forth by the Japanese government. This was followed by a unanimous adoption of the same resolution by 192 countries at the United Nations General Assembly. It was indeed a great joy to ultimately have the agreement of Cuba and China who had initially objected to the Japanese draft resolution. But it must be remembered that the United Nations acknowledgement is not the solution to the human rights issues confronting the leprosy affected people. In fact the real work starts now and we must give it even a stronger impetus to arrive at the final solution. There are a number of things that I consider very important in the solution of human rights issue and that is the cooperation of the local media. Their contribution would be to cover this very issue, as widely as possible, and to promote further understanding of leprosy through their media reports. In addition to the media cooperation I have asked the cooperation of influential people of the world in agreeing to the principle that discrimination must be eliminated. I have been transmitting the endorsement obtained from the world leaders of different walks of life in a form of a message, the Global Appeal, every year to the entire world. The past signatories were Nobel Peace Prize laureates, CEOs of leading global companies, religious leaders among others. I will continue to devote myself in the work of leprosy elimination and the solution of human rights issues with my three guiding principles of “passion, perseverance and persistence.” I would now like to touch upon briefly about the Great East Japan Earthquake relief assistance. So much assistance has poured in to support the disaster-affected areas from both overseas and the entire country. Most of the donations are sent to the Japanese Red Cross Society and eventually delivered to the survivors. But the \280 billion public donation still sleeps in the bank vaults today. Why? One of the reasons for this delay is that the local municipal offices that are mandated to deliver the public donations to the victims are busy with their work of helping the survivors, or some of the offices have themselves been victimized and there are no means of delivering the money. |