PBS News special report: Chinese dissidents, whistleblowers and government petitioners are being labeled “mentally ill” incarcerated in psychiatric wards and subjected to electroshock—a tactic reminiscent of Soviet Russia and the alliance between psychiatry and the police state. The marriage of psychiatry with communist/socialist and police state regimes has spanned countries across the globe as an effective means to deal with political dissension. In Soviet Russia 40 million people were institutionalized in Russian Gulags, many after being diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” an invented psychiatric illness modified to suit incarceration of citizens who opposed the oppressive regime. Symptoms included inflexibility of convictions, nervous exhaustion brought on by the search for justice and criminal lunacy, which was identifiable by criticism of the government or communism.
Today in China, not only political dissidents, but religious groups such as the Falun Gong, have been labeled mentally ill, incarcerated in psychiatric wards, tortured not only with electroshock but with intravenous injections and extremely painful acupuncture applied as an electric current to the sole of the foot. They are heavily drugged to force them to renounce their beliefs.
These practices are not limited to Russia, China, Cuba or Uzbekistan, all of which have recently employed similar psychiatric incarceration of citizens for political protest. In the UK, a specialized unit called the Fixated Threat Assessment Centre has the authority to incarcerate anyone who has given “inappropriate or threatening communications” to a member of government into a psychiatric ward. The assessment teams are made up of police, as well as psychiatrists and psychologists who have been given the authority to evaluate, accuse and detain anyone against their will indefinitely. This is all done under the guise of “anti-terrorism.”
The use of psychiatry and psychology against citizens for their political, religious and social beliefs must be abolished.
Watch video here: http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/09/video-chinese-dissidents-committed-to-mental-hospitals/