Oral History, Heritage Conservation, and the Leprosy Settlement: The Sungai Buloh Community in Malaysia

Abstract

Compulsory segregation defines the self-identity of the ex-patient residents of Sungai Buloh Leprosy Settlement in Malaysia. For them, living for many years in the settlement, hailed as a modern feat of engineering when it was first built, the experience has largely been shaped by their exclusion from society as a frightful health threat and the spatial pursuit of social order within a confinement institution. On October 20, 1926, the colonial government of the British-controlled Federated Malay States, comprising Perak, Selangor, Pahang, and Negri Sembilan approved the Lepers Enactment, endorsing the segregation of leprosy sufferers. Four years later, on March 15, 1930, Sungai Buloh came into existence. The settlement has received many patients from the peninsula since its inception.