Overview

Judicial psychiatry against religious or political dissidents is emphatically prohibited by
internationally agreed-upon standards of legal and medical ethics. The exposure of
political and abusive psychiatry in the former Soviet Union was once a major human
rights concern. It eventually forced the withdrawal of the Soviet All-Union Society of
Psychiatrists and Neuropathologists from the World Psychiatric Association.

Similar punitive misuse of psychiatry exists in China, but has received far less attention
than that of the Soviet Union. Part of the reason is that while the Chinese authorities
routinely use torture on prisoners of conscience in special psychiatric hospitals, few
reports on this abuse have come to light.

Since July 1999, however, Falun Gong practitioners have, at great risks to their own
lives, been sending substantial and detailed reports on the incarceration and violent abuse
of thousands of peaceful Falun Gong practitioners in psychiatric hospitals by the Chinese
government. These reports have now exposed the Chinese government's systematic
exploitation of psychiatry for despotic repression. The abuse far exceeds in scope and
severity even that of the former Soviet Union.

In addition to turning mental hospitals into veritable brainwashing institutions and torture
camps to force Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their beliefs, the Chinese
government also seeks to incriminate Falun Gong for the tragedies that the Chinese
government itself has caused. There have been more than a few reports on how the
heartless police and "doctors" shouted at practitioners: "We are going to make you lose
you mind, make you commit suicide, and publicize your cases as examples of 'Falun
Gong' insanity."

Due to limits of space, we can only report a few of these horrifying stories of the
suffering of Falun Gong practitioners in Chinese mental hospitals. We call on the
international community, and in particular the World Psychiatric Association, to pressure
the Chinese government to put an immediate end to its abuse of psychiatry to repress
dissidents and persons of faith.

Daniel B. Borenstein, President of the American Psychiatric Association, wrote a letter to
the New York Times entitled "Jailed in China: Confront the Abuse" published March 27,
2001, in which he stated:
“The WPA [World Psychiatric Association] Committee on the Use and Abuse of
Psychiatry has moved too slowly in the face of serious accusations about
psychiatric imprisonment of Falun Gong members, union and student leaders, and
Falun Gong Human Rights Working Group 2
others who are diagnosed as "political maniacs" and subjected to shock therapy
and psycho-tropic medications.”

That was written almost one year ago. No sanctions have been issued, and the atrocities
committed in these Chinese "psychiatric prisons" continue unabated.

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