China locking up dissidents in mental hospitals

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China locking up dissidents in mental hospitals: Rights group

Former psychiatric patient Chen Guoming carrying out a protest in a Beijing park in July 2011 to raise awareness about China’s involuntary commitment system.

Chen reenacted the experience of his family members binding him with tape and taking him against his will to a psychiatric hospital.

The message on the ground reads “Anyone may be ‘made mentally ill’.”

DHARAMSHALA, August 23: Thousands of people including dissidents are locked up against their will in China’s psychiatric institutions, often as a form of punishment or political purposes, a new report said Wednesday.

The report released by Chinese Human Rights Defenders titled ‘The Darkest Corners: Abuses of Involuntary Psychiatric Commitment in China’ comes a month ahead of the United Nation’s first review of China's compliance with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which it ratified in 2008.

Prepared after studying over 60 cases of individuals held in psychiatric hospitals and conducting 15 interviews with individuals who were previously detained in psychiatric hospitals, the report details the grim conditions and human rights abuses faced by these individuals.

The report finds that those locked up for alleged mental illnesses are frequently subjected to forced medical treatment, violence, and physical abuse such as electric shocks. Restricted from communicating with family members or lawyers, the study says patients stand little chance of legal redress.

“Those locked up for ‘mental illnesses’ are one of the most vulnerable groups in China,” said Renee Xia, international director of CHRD. “Not only are they deprived of their liberty on the basis of alleged disabilities; those who violate their rights also face little legal oversight or accountability.”

The report states that Chinese government officials often exploit the system to lock up activists, dissidents, and petitioners.

“Those who have the means — power and money — to either compel or pay psychiatric hospitals to detain individuals out of a desire to punish, silence, or simply get rid of them have been able to do so with impunity,” the report says.

“Although people who initiate a commitment usually allege that the prospective patient suffers from psychosocial disability, there are cases in which government officials bring a “patient” to a hospital, admit that the individual is not mentally ill, and the hospital commits them anyway.”

In one documented case, the report describes how human-rights lawyer Liu Shihui videotaped a nurse telling him that two petitioners whom he had come to visit in a psychiatric hospital could only be released if they agreed to stop petitioning the government.

At present, the report points out, there are no laws in China properly governing mental health. The Chinese national legislature's permanent Standing Committee is set to meet at the end of the month to discuss a draft mental health law that appears to codify the status quo, CHRD said, urging a rewrite.

“We urge the UN Committee to call on the Chinese government to take immediate steps to abolish the involuntary commitment of people with psychosocial disabilities,” CHRD said.

The rights group called on the Chinese government to abolish regulations authorising involuntary commitment, to monitor psychiatric hospitals to ensure that the human rights of patients are respected and to hold legally accountable those responsible for detaining individuals in psychiatric hospitals.

phayul.com

[Latindancer]

Welcome back to the 18th century

[crocodilexp]

Old Soviet practice. If they're against the party line, they must be insane.

[Rural Surin]

Old Soviet practice. If they're against the party line, they must be insane.

This practice is historically universal.

[hazz]

Old Soviet practice. If they're against the party line, they must be insane.

What happened is the ussr psychiatrists decided that what the west labels as eccentric behaviour, was a mental illness in need to treatment. Later on someone worked out that if communism is perfect and the society it creates is perfect too; Then people who reject it, are rejecting perfection, this fits in with the description of excentricity and therefore it is imperative that these people are helped.

Strangly enough there was a east west split on this and it resulted in both sides bottling each other.

In the case of the Chinese I guess it's an attempt to find somewhere to park dissidents without being accused of persiquing prisoners of conchence, bit nieve on their part if they think it's going to work

[Hampsha]

China does seem to be more like North Korea lately, I guess more like its old self.

[Albert Shagnastier]

China locking up dissidents in mental hospitals

Shit..they got Koojo.

[mrloa192]

China does seem to be more like North Korea lately, I guess more like its old self.

USA have started the same thing anyone against the government will be locked up without charge and can be held indefanty

[Norton]

USA have started the same thing anyone against the government will be locked up without charge and can be held indefanty

Really! Please do enlighten us with specifics.

[Zooheekock]

Don't know about America but in Britain the Mental Health Act is used (I think) about 50,000 times a year to detain people against their will and then there are Compulsory Treatment Orders on top of that allowing courts to administer medication by force.

[mrloa192]

Hi

USA have started the same thing anyone against the government will be locked up without charge and can be held indefanty

Really! Please do enlighten us with specifics.

His name is Brendon j Raub marine vet locked up just for comments made on FACEBOOK

[Norton]

Brendon j Raub

Thanks for that. If the article I found is correct, he was railroaded and unjustly confined. However, he is on his way home now. Hardly a comparison to Chinese practices. Doubt you will see the dissidents there released after due process of law.

"HOPEWELL, Va. -- Brandon J. Raub has been released from the Salem Veterans Affairs hospital and is on his way to see his family, officials from the Rutherford Institute said this afternoon."



UPDATE: Detained Marine veteran leaves VA hospital | WSLS 10