EX-LEPROSY PATIENTS OUTRAGED BY HOTEL SNUB

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Ex-Leprosy Patients Outraged by Hotel Snub

TOKYO (Reuters) - A group of former leprosy patients in Japan angrily rejected the apology of a hotel that had refused them admittance and said on Thursday they would fight on until the violation of their human rights was recognized.
The hotel at the hot springs resort in the western prefecture of Kumamoto had said that other guests might be troubled by the presence of some 25 former leprosy patients and canceled their bookings, despite protests that they were cured and there was no chance of infection.

Hot springs hotels traditionally feature communal baths.

Hotel manager Atsuko Maeda was quoted by the Yomiuri Shimbun daily as apologizing for "our ignorance and lack of knowledge."

Akira Ota, an official at the center for ex-leprosy patients in Kumamoto, some 560 miles from Tokyo, where the group lives, said the apology was insincere.

"This was basically just to save their own image as a hotel, to try to settle this incident as quickly as possible," the 60-year-old Ota said.

Japanese who caught leprosy -- now known as Hansen's Disease -- were forced by a draconian 1953 law to be confined in special leprosy centers despite the discovery of drugs in the late 1940s that made treatment possible as an out-patient.

The law was not repealed until 1996. Even then, intense social prejudice caused several thousand people to remain in the centers, too fearful, ill or impoverished to leave.

A landmark 2001 court ruling by a Kumamoto court ordered the Japanese government to pay compensation to more than 100 patients and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologized.

Ota said the hotel incident showed prejudice remained widespread.

"What was repealing the law about? What was the 2001 ruling about? Nobody who hasn't gone through it can understand the feelings of a person whose human rights have been trampled."